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Maintaining the health of software monitors

  • SI: SwHM
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Abstract

Software health management (SWHM) techniques complement the rigorous verification and validation processes that are applied to safety-critical systems prior to their deployment. These techniques are used to monitor deployed software in its execution environment, serving as the last line of defense against the effects of a critical fault. SWHM monitors use information from the specification and implementation of the monitored software to detect violations, predict possible failures, and help the system recover from faults. Changes to the monitored software, such as adding new functionality or fixing defects, therefore, have the potential to impact the correctness of both the monitored software and the SWHM monitor. In this work, we describe how the results of a software change impact analysis technique, Directed Incremental Symbolic Execution (DiSE ), can be applied to monitored software to identify the potential impact of the changes on the SWHM monitor software. The results of DiSE can then be used by other analysis techniques, e.g., testing, debugging, to help preserve and improve the integrity of the SWHM monitor as the monitored software evolves.

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Notes

  1. We use the term reliability to mean ‘continuity of correct service’ as specified in [4].

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Johann Schumann for his valuable insights on Bayesian Networks and how they are used within the software health management domain, and for discussions on how the change impact analysis results can be used within this domain to maintain the health of the monitors. The authors also thank Paul Miner and Ben Di Vito for their helpful comments to improve the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, USA

    Suzette Person

  2. NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, USA

    Neha Rungta

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  1. Suzette Person
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Correspondence to Suzette Person.

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Person, S., Rungta, N. Maintaining the health of software monitors. Innovations Syst Softw Eng 9, 257–269 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11334-013-0213-z

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