A Binomial Software Reliability Model Based On Coverage Of Structural Testing Criteria

摘要

A new approach to software reliability modeling is discussed where variables indirectly related with software reliability are used to provide additional information for the modeling process. Previous studies, empirical and theoretical evidences, and results from experiments indicate that there is a strong relationship between software reliability and coverage of program elements required to be exercised by structural testing criteria. This paper develops a binomial type coverage-based software reliability model through the definition of a coverage-based failure rate function. The Binomial software reliability Model Based on Coverage-BMBC-is proposed and discussed. In the BMBC test data between failures is used instead of time as independent variable; the model was assessed with test data from a real application, making use of the following structural testing criteria: all-nodes, all-edges, and potential-uses-a data-flow based family of testing criteria. The results from our experiments have shown that our modeling approach has some advantages over some traditional reliability models and points to a very promising research direction in software reliability.