A Comparative Analysis of Reliability Assessment Methods for Web-based Software

Abstract

As web technology has advanced, many business software applications are built on the web. In such web environment, it has become very important to ensure the reliability of web-based software systems such as Software as a Service (SaaS) or Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) based systems because service failures in those systems may have an effect on extensive users. With the comparison to the reliability studies on traditional software, there are only a few studies on the reliability of web-based software. The dynamic environment of the web makes it much more complicated to assess the reliability of web-based software. In this paper, the authors investigate the characteristics of reliability assessment methods for web-based software such as SaaS and SOA based software systems. The authors also evaluate those methods based on hypothetical execution scenarios to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of each method. This analysis helps the authors identify remaining problems on the reliability research in the web environment and provides insight into possible solutions.