10 Software Reliability

Black box reliability analysis (P. 111): Estimation of the software reliability based on failure observations from testing or operation. These approaches are called black box approaches because internal details of the software are not considered. Software metric based reliability analysis (P. 115): Reliability evaluation based on the static analysis of the software (e.g., lines of code, number of statements, complexity) or its development process and conditions (e.g., developer experience, applied testing methods). Architecture-based reliability analysis (P. 119): Evaluation of the software system reliability from software component reliabilities and the system architecture (the way the system is composed out of the components). These approaches are sometimes called component-based reliability estimation (CBRE), or grey or white box approaches.