IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering

An approach for the modeling and evaluation of reliability and availability of systems using the knowledge of the reliability growth of their components is presented. Detailed models of reliability and availability for single-component systems are derived under much weaker assumption than usually considered. These models, termed knowledge models, enable phenomena to be precisely characterized, and... View full abstract»

Results of an analysis of the communication performance as perceived by the application layer in the presence of background load are presented. The analysis was carried out on two distinct protocol suites, TCP/IP and XNS, on a single Ethernet LAN with personal computer workstations. Service times for a reliable transfer and an unreliable transmission as perceived by the application layer were meas... View full abstract»

A software reliability allocation model is developed. This model determines how reliable software modules and programs must be in order to maximize the user's utility, while taking into account the financial and technical constraints of the system. The model is shown to provide a unified approach in which the user's requirements and preferences are formally integrated with the technical structure ... View full abstract»

An evaluation method which allows existing reliability growth models to provide better predictions of software behavior is presented. The method is primarily based on the analysis of the trend exhibited by the data collected on the program (which is determined by reliability growth tests). Reliability data are then partitioned according to the trend, and two types of reliability growth models can ... View full abstract»

A graph-oriented, nonprocedural development environment in which composite programs are constructed by coupling a collection of existing component programs, the interfaces of which are defined by a fixed number of input ports and output ports, is discussed. It is shown that when the coupling graph is cyclic there is the possibility of a deadlock. A system that permits hierarchical construction of ... View full abstract»

A decision-theoretic procedure for determining an optimal time interval for testing software prior to its release is proposed. The approach is based on the principles of decision-making under uncertainty and involves a maximization of expected utility. Two plausible forms for the utility function, one based on costs and the other involving the realized reliability of the software, are described. U... View full abstract»

A simple proof is given, showing that for every operational description of a software system expressed as a discrete state transition function on a virtual machine, there is a continuous smooth function on the reals that agrees with the state transition function on all legal states and has exactly the same complexity. It is suggested that an implication of this result is that there is no reason, i... View full abstract»