NDLI: Measurement of failure rate in widely distributed software

Content Provider	IEEE Xplore Digital Library
Author	Chillarege, R. Biyani, S. Rosenthal, J.
Copyright Year	1995
Description	Author affiliation: Center for Software Eng., IBM Thomas J. Watson Res. Center, Yorktown Heights, NY, USA (Chillarege, R.; Biyani, S.; Rosenthal, J.)
Abstract	In the history of empirical failure rate measurement, one problem that continues to plague researchers and practitioners is that of measuring the customer perceived failure rate of commercial software. Unfortunately, even order of magnitude measures of failure rate are not truly available for commercial software which is widely distributed. Given repeated reports on the criticality of software, and its significance, the industry flounders for some real baselines. The paper reports the failure rate of a several million line of code commercial software product distributed to hundreds of thousands of customers. To first order of approximation, the MTBF reaches around 4 years and 2 years for successive releases of the software. The changes in the failure rate as a function of severity, release and time are also provided. The measurement technique develops a direct link between failures and faults, providing an opportunity to study and describe the failure process. Two metrics, the fault weight, corresponding to the number of failures due to a fault and failure window, measuring the length of time between the first and last fault, are defined and characterized. The two metrics are found to be higher for higher severity faults, consistently across all severities and releases. At the same time the window to weight ratio, is invariant by severity. The fault weight and failure window are natural measures and are intuitive about the failure process. The fault weight measures the impact of a fault on the overall failure rate and the failure window the dispersion of that impact over time. These two do provide a new forum for discussion and opportunity to gain greater understanding of the processes involved.<>
Starting Page	424
Ending Page	433
File Size	864988
Page Count	10
File Format	PDF
ISBN	0818670797
DOI	10.1109/FTCS.1995.466957
Language	English
Publisher	Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
Publisher Date	1995-06-27
Access Restriction	Subscribed
Rights Holder	Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
Subject Keyword	Software measurement Computer industry Time measurement Hardware Fault tolerance Software engineering History Measurement techniques Length measurement Weight measurement
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article

Sl.	Authority	Responsibilities	Communication Details
1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
2	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Host Institute of the Project: The host institute of the project is responsible for providing infrastructure support and hosting the project	https://www.iitkgp.ac.in
3	National Digital Library of India Office, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	The administrative and infrastructural headquarters of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in
4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
5	Website/Portal (Helpdesk)	Queries regarding NDLI and its services	support@ndl.gov.in
6	Contents and Copyright Issues	Queries related to content curation and copyright issues	content@ndl.gov.in
7	National Digital Library of India Club (NDLI Club)	Queries related to NDLI Club formation, support, user awareness program, seminar/symposium, collaboration, social media, promotion, and outreach	clubsupport@ndl.gov.in
8	Digital Preservation Centre (DPC)	Assistance with digitizing and archiving copyright-free printed books	dpc@ndl.gov.in
9	IDR Setup or Support	Queries related to establishment and support of Institutional Digital Repository (IDR) and IDR workshops	idr@ndl.gov.in

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