Discrete Program-Size Dependent Software Reliability Assessment: Modeling, Estimation, and Goodness-of-Fit Comparisons

Shinji INOUE
Shigeru YAMADA

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Fundamentals of Electronics, Communications and Computer Sciences   Vol.E90-A    No.12    pp.2891-2902
Publication Date: 2007/12/01
Online ISSN: 1745-1337
DOI: 10.1093/ietfec/e90-a.12.2891
Print ISSN: 0916-8508
Type of Manuscript: PAPER
Category: Reliability, Maintainability and Safety Analysis
Keyword: 
software reliability assessment,  modeling framework,  program size,  discrete Weibull distribution,  heuristic parameter estimation algorithm,  goodness-of-fit,  

Full Text: PDF(470.3KB)>>
Buy this Article



Summary: 
In this paper we propose a discrete program-size dependent software reliability growth model flexibly describing the software failure-occurrence phenomenon based on a discrete Weibull distribution. We also conduct model comparisons of our discrete SRGM with existing discrete SRGMs by using actual data sets. The program size is one of the important metrics of software complexity. It is known that flexible discrete software reliability growth modeling is difficult due to the mathematical manipulation under a conventional modeling-framework in which the time-dependent behavior of the cumulative number of detected faults is formulated by a difference equation. Our discrete SRGM is developed under an existing unified modeling-framework based on the concept of general order-statistics, and can incorporate the effect of the program size into software reliability assessment. Further, we discuss the method of parameter estimation, and derive software reliability assessment measures of our discrete SRGM. Finally, we show numerical examples of discrete software reliability analysis based on our discrete SRGM by using actual data.


open access publishing via