A SUMMARY OF SOFTWARE RELIABILITY DEMONSTRATION TESTING MODELS

Abstract

This paper summarizes models for software reliability demonstration testing (SRDT). The models are briefly classified into three types: (1) continuous models, (2) discrete models and (3) models considering damage sizes of software failures. Under the continuous models, the software product of interest is tested for time t and is accepted if the number of software failures in the test does not exceed a prespecified integer s. The values of design variables, t and s are determined based on (i) the concept of a statistical test (a statistical model) and (ii) the Kullback–Leibler information (a K–L model). The K–L model has less parameters to be prespecified than the statistical model. Under the discrete models for SRDT, the software of interest is tested with n input data sets and is accepted if the number of input data sets causing software failures in the test does not exceed a prespecified integer c. A statistical model as well as a K–L model is described for the discrete models. Neither continuous nor discrete models in the above take the damage size of software failures into consideration. The third type of models are continuous and discrete models which consider the cumulative damage size caused by software failures as well as the number of software failures in the test.