Loading...
Please wait, while we are loading the content...
Similar Documents
W Will the Real Operational Profile Please Stand Up? Tolerating Component and Subsystem Failures Software Component Interoperability
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Voas, Jeffrey Saic |
| Abstract | hen there are complaints about the quality of the software, they are usually directed at the software's behavior , and not the underlying text [1]. Therefore it is important to define what constitutes bad behavior in software. Bad software behavior is a function of the environment that the software resides in, and the environment is a mixture of the underlying hardware, the operating system, potential threats, the operational profile, other external software components that interact with the software, and the manner in which the software will be used [2]. Since these factors affect the software system's behavior , the architectural plan for how components are to be integrated should be, in part, based on these factors. For example, a toaster comes with a warranty and that warranty assumes a particular environment, such as sitting on a kitchen countertop. Now take a working toaster, put it in another environment , like a bathtub full of water, and the behavior of the toaster is not going to be the same, and the warranty no longer applies. The same argument applies to software. One of the most important issues during requirements generation is defining, as best as possible, the software environment ; its operational profile is key. Each piece of software has a set of input vectors that may be executed during testing or field usage. That is the soft-ware's input domain. The operational profile is simply a probability distribution function (PDF) for the input vectors of the input domain. This means each input vector has a certain probability of being chosen during testing or field usage, and the PDF is what defines the probabilities for each input vector. For example, if the input domain has 10 input vectors, and each input vector is as equally likely to be selected as any other vector, then each vector has a 10 percent chance of being selected. (Note that the operational profile is highly important when system-level reliability testing occurs [3].) Thus, without an accurate description of the operational profile, predictions concerning how the software will behave in the field are unlikely to be accurate since each individual input vector can cause differing behaviors. Therefore, spending the extra time to contemplate the eventual operational profile and target environment is often as important as defining the software's functionality during requirements definition. More and more software is delivered to system integrators in black-box form; these components are … |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://www.crosstalkonline.org/storage/issue-archives/2005/200511/200511-Voas.pdf |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://www.stsc.hill.af.mil/crosstalk/2005/11/0511voas.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
