Software Reliability Modelling

The following sections are included:

• Preface

• Acknowledgements

• Contents

• Some notations and abbreviations

The following sections are included:

• Need for Software Reliability Analysis

• Some General Concepts
  • Fault and failure
  • Definition of software reliability
  • Software vs hardware reliability

• History of the Software Reliability
  • Before 1970
  • 1970-1979
  • 1980-1989
  • 1990-present

• Bibliographic notes

The following sections are included:

• Classification and Unification of the Existing Models
  • A classification according to probabilistic assumptions
  • Other classification systems
  • Unification of some existing models

• Fault Counting vs Failure Intensity Modelling

• Limitations of Some Common Assumptions
  • The size of a fault
  • Random and homogeneous testing
  • Estimation vs prediction
  • Blackbox vs whitebox models

• Some Reliability Theoretical Concepts and Notations
  • Some important reliability measures
  • Some useful distributions in reliability engineering
  • Estimation of parameters

• Bibliographic notes

The following sections are included:

• General Theory of Markov Process Modelling

• The Jelinski-Moranda (JM) Model
  • Model assumptions and some properties
  • Estimation of model parameters
  • Notes on the maximum likelihood estimates

• Decreasing Failure Intensity (DFI) Models
  • A general DFI formulation
  • Some specific DFI models
  • Validation of the exponentiality
  • Heuristic arguments of some special cases

• Models with Time-dependent Transition Probability
  • The Schick-Wolverton model and its modifications
  • The Shanthikumar general Markov model

• Other generalizations of the JM-model
  • An imperfect debugging model
  • A variable fault exposure coefficient model
  • Other general Markov formulations

• Markov Models in System Context
  • The Littlewood semi-Markov model
  • Some models of modular software
  • Some availability models

• Bibliographic notes

The following sections are included:

• General Theory of NHPP Modelling

• The Goel-Okumoto (GO) Model
  • Model assumptions and some properties
  • A heuristic derivation of the GO-model
  • Parameter estimation of the GO-model
  • A simple generalization

• S-shaped NHPP models

• The Musa execution time model and generalizations
  • The basic execution time model
  • The logarithmic Poisson execution time model
  • Notes on applying execution time models

• Other NHPP models
  • Some reliability growth models
  • NHPP models using testing-effort
  • Models for multiple-type of faults

• Comments on Using NHPP Models

• Bibliographic notes

The following sections are included:

• Input-domain related software reliability models
  • The Nelson model
  • Some input-domain-based models
  • Some other test-run reliability models

• Some Fault-seeding Models

• Models using software complexity metrics
  • Models related to the Halstead metrics
  • Some other software metrics models
  • Notes on software complexity models

• Some Other static models
  • A hypergeometric distribution model
  • A fault-spreading model
  • A fault complexity model

• Bibliographic notes

The following sections are included:

• Introduction to Bayesian software reliability models

• The Littlewood-Verrall (LV) Model

• Some Bayesian Formulations of the JM-model
  • The Langberg-Singpurwalla model and modifications
  • Other Bayesian formulations of the JM-model

• Other Bayesian software reliability models
  • A model for fault-free probability
  • Bayesian formulation of an NHPP model
  • A Bayesian model using the geometric distribution

• Notes on the application of Bayesian models

• Bibliographic notes

The following sections are included:

• Time series approach
  • Some general time series models
  • Some random coefficient autoregressive models
  • A Fourier series model

• Regression Models
  • Some general regression models
  • Proportional hazard models

• Bibliographic Notes

The following sections are included:

• Release problem as an optimization problem

• Optimum release time based on reliability criteria
  • Stopping rules using the number of remaining faults
  • Stopping rules using the failure intensity requirements

• Optimum policy based on cost criterion
  • Application of a simple cost model
  • Some general formulations

• Other optimum release policies
  • Minimizing the expected cost given a reliability goal
  • Release policy of software with modular structure
  • Release time of versions of software packages
  • A sequential Bayes decision model

• Bibliographic notes

The following sections are included:

• Software engineering techniques

• Software quality and reliability engineering

• Books for further reading

The following sections are included:

• References

• Index