Software Reliability Testing Tools: An Overview and Comparison

Abstract

Software reliability has been regarded as major quality attribute and still there are very few available standardized tools. Software reliability is such a significant factor in finalizing the overall quality of software, thus it must be estimated. In this paper we will discuss various software reliability metrics. A well designed metrics can helps in detection and correction of requirement faults that will guide in avoidance of error in later stage of software development. A software reliability growth model is one of the basic techniques used to evaluate the software reliability quantitatively. The software growth model is required to have a significant performance in term of goodness of fit, reliability etc. In this paper we will summarize some existing software reliability tools such as CASRE, SMERFS, SOFTREL, SOREL etc. Overall the paper will provide various ways to enhance software reliability. 1. Software Reliability: It is believed that software is always correct and once it runs correctly it will be work rightly forever this gave rise to the idea of Software Reliability. According to ANSI, ―Software Reliability is defined as the probability of software operation that is failure-free for a particular period of time in a particular environment. The probability of failure-free software operation for a specified period of time in a specified environment is known as Software reliability. In highly complex modern software systems, reliability is most significant feature. Software Reliability reduces software failures during the development of software and software quality control in the complex modern software systems. Software reliability can also be defined for software as the probability of carrying out without failures for some specific interval of time. A fault is a defect that causes or can potentially cause the failure of software when it is executed (3). Unpredictability of any software comes due to the failures or occurrence of faults in the system. As software does not exhaust or deteriorate, as a mechanical or an electronic system does, the changeability of software is mainly due to bugs or design faults in it. Reliability is a probabilistic measure that believes that the incidence of failure of software is a random phenomenon.