Fault avoidance and tolerance in software reliability

The use of causeeffect graphing for software specification and validation was investigated. Both schemes are based on software redundancy assuming that the events of coincidental software failures are rare. This paper provides a concepeual framework for expressing the attributes of what constitutes dependable and reliable computing. Sep 21, 2015 summary software reliability is defined as the probability of failurefree operation of a software system for a specified time in a specified environment. Reliability and fault tolerance nversion programming vs. At least in complex systems can be utilized on simple systems or when any other approach is physically impossible fault avoidance techniques can also be combined with fault tolerance 3. Fault avoidance is a technique that is used in an attempt to prevent the occurrence of faults. For systems that require high reliability, this may still be a necessity. A voting strategy called consensus voting may in part compensate for the problems that arise from this. In this work we discuss the fault avoidance and the fault tolerance approaches for increasing the reliability of aerospace and automotive systems.

Perrun failure probability and runs executiontime distribution for a particular fault tolerant technique can be. Fault avoidance alone is rarely used to provide system level reliability. Software reliability through faultavoidance and fault tolerance. Various software fault injection and detection models are studied, and the behavior of the models has been summarized. Terminology, techniques for building reliable systems, andfault tolerance are discussed. Software reliability through fault avoidance and fault tolerance. Sw faulttolerance techniques software faulttolerance is based on hw faulttolerance software fault detection is a bigger challenge many software faults are of latent type that shows up later. In general fault tolerance is always based on various assumptions concerning the degree of perfectionism certain work items are carried out. Development techniques are used that either minimize the. Reliability and fault tolerance nversion programming vs recovery blocks. Similarly, the software that supports the highlevel semantic interface 1. Work in 45 aims to treat software fault tolerance as a robust supervisory control rsc problem and propose a rsc approach to software fault tolerance.

This article aims to discuss various issues of software fault avoidance. Faultintolerance and faulttolerance the fault intolerance or faultavoidance approach improves system reliability by removing the source of failures i. An introduction to the design and analysis of fault. Reliability of computer systems and networks offers in depth and uptodate coverage of reliability and availability for students with a focus on important applications areas, computer systems, and networks. Faulttolerant software has the ability to satisfy requirements despite failures. Pdf software reliability through faultavoidance and. Various methods of software fault mitigation, in case the software fault cannot be avoided are discussed. Faultavoidance and faultremoval features of the computer. There are two basic techniques for obtaining fault tolerant software. The fault avoidance and the fault tolerance approaches for increasing the reliability of aerospace and automotive systems. Fault tolerance fault tolerance a product oriented concept accepts faults in a limited capacity and masks their manifestation a faulttolerant design enables a system to continue its intended operation, possibly at a reduced level, rather than failing completely, when some part of the system fails. Proper design of fault tolerant systems begins with the requirements speci.

That is, it should compensate for the faults and continue to. Multiversion software reliability through fault avoidance and fault tolerance. Multiversion software reliability through faultavoidance. A survey of software fault tolerance techniques jonathan m.

Software fault is also known as defect, arises when the expected result dont match with the actual results. Index termsdesign diversity, fault tolerance, multiple computation, nversion programming, nversion software, software reliability, tolerance ofdesign faults. As software fault tolerance is often measured in terms of system availability, which is a function of reliability, we should include various single version sv software based approaches of fault tolerance for more effective software fault avoidance in order to combat latent defects, environment and operational faults. The fault avoidance and the fault tolerance approaches for increasing the reliability of aerospace and automotive systems 2005014157. A designer must analyze the envir onment and deter mine the failur es that must be tolerated to achieve the desir ed level of r eliability. As more and more complex systems get designed and built, especially safety critical systems, software fault tolerance and the next generation of hardware fault tolerance will need to evolve to be able to solve the design fault. Pdf fault tolerant software reliability engineering. The fault avoidance and the fault tolerance approaches for. As infrastructurerelated fault tolerance is discussed in the coming section, here the software aspect of fault tolerance is discussed. Hardware reliability an overview sciencedirect topics. Reliability oriented design methods and programming techniques 4. Factors influencing sr are fault count and operational profile dependability means fault avoidance, fault tolerance, fault removal and fault forecasting.

For example, two similar errors will out weigh one good result in the threeversion case, anda set ofthree similar errors will prevail overaset oftwosimilar good results wheni n 5. Fault avoidance, fault removal and fault tolerance represent three. Pdf software reliability through faultavoidance and fault. This course has been developed by the centre for software reliability with funding from the engineering and physical sciences research council grant number 00711eng95 as part of their. These faults are usually found in either the software or hardware of the system in which the software is running in order to provide service in accordance to the provided specifications. The following four sections describe fault tolerance strategies that are commonly utilized to improve software reliability hech86. Fault tolerance is the property that enables a system to continue operating properly in the event of the failure of or one or more faults within some of its components.

In this project we have proposed to investigate a number of experimental and theoretical issues associated with the practical use of multiversion software in providing dependable software through. Pdf software reliability through faultavoidance and faulttolerance. Lastly, advanced software fault tolerance models were studied to provide alternatives and improvements in situations where simple software fault tolerance strategies break down. Software fault tolerance carnegie mellon university. Smith computer science deparunent, columbia university, new york, ny 10027 cucs32588 abstract this report examines the state of the field of software fault tolerance. Fault tolerant software assures system reliability by using protective redundancy at the software level.

Nversion approach to faulttolerant software bers the set of good similar results at a decision point, then the decision algorithm will arrrive at an erroneous decision result. Describes why faults occur and how modern digital systems are fault tolerant. Motivation for software fault tolerance usual method of software reliability is fault avoidance using good software engineering methodologies large and complex systems fault avoidance not successful rule of thumb fault density in software is 1050 per 1,000 lines of code for good software and 15 after intensive testing using automated tools. All software defects are eliminated prior to operation. This is the basic property of a system which we seek to enhance through the concept of fault tolerance. As software fault tolerance is often measured in terms of system availability, which is a function of reliability, we should include various single version sv software based approaches of fault tolerance for more effective software fault avoidance in order to combat latent defects, environment and. In this approach the software component under consideration is treated as a controlled object that is modeled as a generalized kripke structure or finitestate concurrent system 44,45. These techniques contributes to system reliability through use of structured. Though the goal of fault avoidance is to reduce the likelihood of failure, even after the most careful application of fault avoidance techniques, failures will occur.

Planning to avoid failur es fault avoidance is the most important aspect of fault tolerance. Use of informationhiding, strong typing, good engineering principles. For most other systems, eventually you give up looking for faults and ship it. Redundancy underlies all approaches to fault tolerance. Combining fault avoidance, fault removal and fault tolerance. If its operating quality decreases at all, the decrease is proportional to the severity of the failure, as compared to a naively designed system, in which even a small failure. Reliability is a popular aspect of software dependability, which relies, in particular, on fault forecasting and fault removal. We have continued collection of data on the relationships between software faults and reliability, and the coverage provided by the testing process as measured by different metrics. Fault avoidance and tolerance technique fault tolerance. Fault avoidance results from conservative design practices such as the use of high reliability parts. Nov 26, 2015 fault tolerance fault tolerance a product oriented concept accepts faults in a limited capacity and masks their manifestation a fault tolerant design enables a system to continue its intended operation, possibly at a reduced level, rather than failing completely, when some part of the system fails. Bug life cycle defect life cycle in software testing duration. There are two basic techniques for obtaining faulttolerant software.

Fault tolerance is the realization that we will have faults in our system hardware andor software and we have to design the system in such a way that it will be tolerant of those faults. Data diverse software fault tolerance techniques 6. Design diverse software fault tolerance techniques 5. A software application can prevent total loss of functionality by. Introduction thetransfer ofthe concepts offault tolerance to comlputersoftware, that is discussed in this paper, began about20yearsafterthe first systematicdiscussionoffault. Textbook n no textbook n useful references n software fault tolerance techniques and implementation n laura pullum, artechhouse publishers, 2001, isbn 1 5805377 n software reliability engineering n michael r. The philosophy which attempts to accomplish this goal is known as fault avoidance. Fault tolerance design for surviving component failures is becoming a necessity for a growing number of companies, far beyond its traditional application areas, like aerospace and telecommunications. The fault avoidance or prevention techniques are dependability enhancing. Fault tolerant software has the ability to satisfy requirements despite failures. A fault avoidance b fault tolerance c fault detection. The mrp approach can be used for modeling fault tolerant software systems. A software application can prevent total loss of functionality by graceful degradation functionality alternatives. Software fault tolerance is an immature area of research.

In the period reported here we have worked on the following. Four papers generated during the reporting period are included as. Topics covered include fault avoidance, fault removal, and fault tolerance, along with statistical methods for the objective assessment of predictive accuracy. As more and more complex systems get designed and built, especially safety critical systems, software fault tolerance and the next generation of hardware fault tolerance will need to evolve to be able to solve the design fault problem. The study 29 shows that system and applications software can potentially detect and correct some or many of these errors by using different software fault tolerance approaches such as replication, voting, and masking with a focus on algorithmbased fault tolerance 7, 31,32,33,34,35,37 or by using a combined software and hardware approaches. We will now consider several methods for dealing with software faults. Citeseerx the fault avoidance and the fault tolerance. Software fault tolerance is the ability of a software to detect and recover from a fault that is happening or has already happened. Mcq questions on software engineering set2 infotechsite. Reliability analysts, software reliability engineers, software system designers, designers of faulttolerant software abstract the effect of failure correlation is to reduce the output space in which a voter makes decisions. Software designers or system integrators who want an introduction to the problems found in designing for fault tolerance and to the range of design solutions.

Fault tolerance fault tolerance a product oriented concept accepts faults in a limited capacity and masks their manifestation a fault tolerant design enables a system to continue its intended operation, possibly at a reduced level, rather than failing completely, when some part of the system fails. Though the goal of fault avoidance is to reduce the likelihood of failure, even after the most careful application of fault avoidance techniques, failures. We modeled the reliability and the availability of a hotstandby duplex system considering design faults, and we subsequently analyzed the performance. Software reliability through faultavoidance and fault. Proper design of faulttolerant systems begins with the requirements speci. Thus, we ob served that system availability and reliability can be in creased when our fault avoidance scheme is used in the remaining system component after some of system com ponents are. Guest editors introduction understanding fault tolerance and. Fault avoidance the basic idea is that if you are really careful as you develop the software system, no faults will creep in. It is stated in statistical terms as a probability which reflects the fact that failures occur at unpredictable times. Multiversion software reliability through faultavoidance and. Guest editors introduction understanding fault tolerance. Citeseerx document details isaac councill, lee giles, pradeep teregowda. Topics reliability, failure and faults failure modes.

Faulttolerant software assures system reliability by using protective redundancy at the software level. Fault tolerance computing draft carnegie mellon university. If its operating quality decreases at all, the decrease is proportional to the severity of the failure, as compared to a naively designed system, in which even a small failure can cause total breakdown. Reliability engineering cs 410510 software engineering class.

Fault avoidance fault detection fault tolerance, recovery and repair. The fault intolerance or fault avoidance approach improves system reliability by removing the source of failures i. It can also be error, flaw, failure, or fault in a computer program. Basic fault tolerant software techniques geeksforgeeks.

Fault forecasting consists of estimating the presence. Diversity and fault avoidance for dependable replication. Runtime techniques are used to ensure that system faults do not. Reliability in software system can be achieved using which of the following strategies.

Some of the methods for avoidance and detection of software faults are summarized. Mcq on software reliability in software engineering part1. Software fault avoidance aims to produce fault free software through various approaches having the common objective of reducing the number of latent defects in software programs. Software fault tolerance is the ability of computer software to continue its normal operation despite the presence of system or hardware faults. Two approaches to increasing system reliability are fault avoidance and fault tolerance. Failures result from unexpected problems internal to the system that eventually manifest themselves in the systems external behaviour and these problems are called errors and their mechanical or algorithmic cause are termed faults. If me defects remain, the operation is reliable only as long as the defects are not involved in progran execution. Multiversion software reliability through faultavoidance and fault tolerance. Hwsw codesign of embedded systems 29 software fault tolerance fault tolerant software design techniques h h rb h v1 h v2 h v3 nvp primary primary alternate alternate nindependent program variants execute in parallel on the identical input. Reliability and fault tolerance goals to understand some of the factors influencing the reliability of a hardware system to understand some of the factors which affect the reliability of a system and how software design faults can be tolerated. Software fault tolerance is the ability of a software to detect and recover from a fault that. Professionals in systems and reliability design, as well as computer architecture, will find it a highly useful reference. Reliability the probability that a device or system will perform a required function under stated conditions for a stated period of time.

Fault avoidance and fault tolerance linkedin slideshare. Reliability in a software system can be achieved using which of the following strategies. Most bugs arise from mistakes and errors made by developers, architects. Lastly, advanced software faulttolerance models were studied to. Approaches to software fault tolerance the usual method to attain reliability of software operation is fault avoidance or intolerance l i.