Effect of fault distribution and execution patterns on fault exposure in software: a simulation study
✍ Scribed by A. von Mayrhauser; Dexing Chen
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2000
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 172 KB
- Volume
- 10
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0960-0833
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✦ Synopsis
Execution patterns and fault distribution characteristics of a program will affect the failure process and thus reliability estimates. The failure process of a software system is influenced by many factors, and traditional software reliability engineering has found it difficult to isolate the effect of each individual factor. A simulation approach is used to investigate the effects of fault distribution, execution pattern and program structure on software reliability estimates. A reliability simulation environment (RSIM) is extended by introducing variable fault distribution patterns in its code generation phase. Flow control points allow varying the execution frequency of different parts of a program. The simulation results show that fault distribution patterns and execution patterns have dramatic effects on fault exposure rate. If the fault distribution is non-uniform, a non-uniform code execution exposes faults more efficiently and effectively than uniform execution. Results also show that the structure of a program affects fault exposure rate and testing time required.