A tutorial on software reliability engineering

Conference · Fri May 12 04:00:00 EDT 1989

OSTI ID:5395692

Lawrence, J. D.

Computer systems are increasingly being required to operate free from externally-detected failures. This is particularly true in the case of large distributed real-time and transaction-processing systems in application areas such as transportation, medicine, defense, finance, marketing and communications. There are many similarities in approaches and techniques between performance analysis and reliability analysis, so the local Performance Expert is a natural person to approach for help with reliability problems. This tutorial will provide an introduction to Reliability Engineering, primarily as it applies to software development. It consists of four parts. The first part defines some important terms, and describes some ways to classify faults and failures. The second portion describes various kinds of activities that can be carried out during the life cycle of the application system, especially those that will be of interest to the Reliability Expert. The fourth section discusses various techniques for achieving software fault tolerance. Finally, we discuss a few modeling techniques and the problems of accurate data collection. 16 refs., 1 fig.

• Research Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Lab., CA (USA)
• Sponsoring Organization: DOE/DP
• DOE Contract Number: W-7405-ENG-48
• OSTI ID: 5395692
• Report Number(s): UCRL-100671; CONF-891222--1; ON: DE89012368
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
990200* -- Mathematics & Computers
COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE
COMPUTERS
DESIGN
DIGITAL COMPUTERS
FAULT TOLERANT COMPUTERS
MEETINGS
RELIABILITY
SYSTEM FAILURE ANALYSIS
SYSTEMS ANALYSIS