Software Reliability Engineering: A Roadmap

Software reliability engineering is focused on engineering techniques for developing and maintaining software systems whose reliability can be quantitatively evaluated. In order to estimate as well as to predict the reliability of software systems, failure data need to be properly measured by various means during software development and operational phases. Moreover, credible software reliability models are required to track underlying software failure processes for accurate reliability analysis and forecasting. Although software reliability has remained an active research subject over the past 35 years, challenges and open questions still exist. In particular, vital future goals include the development of new software reliability engineering paradigms that take software architectures, testing techniques, and software failure manifestation mechanisms into consideration. In this paper, we review the history of software reliability engineering, the current trends and existing problems, and specific difficulties. Possible future directions and promising research subjects in software reliability engineering are also addressed.

1. Introduction

Software permeates our daily life. There is probably no other human-made material which is more omnipresent than software in our modern society. It has become a crucial part of many aspects of society: home appliances, telecommunications, automobiles, airplanes, shopping, auditing, web teaching, personal entertainment, and so on. In particular, science and technology demand high-quality software for making improvements and breakthroughs.