Real-Time Supervision of Software Systems Using the Belief Method

With the critical role played by software systems in the operation of telecommunications networks, the ability to detect and report software failures has become of great importance. This paper presents the failure detection approach of real-time supervision based on the belief method. Real-time supervision allows failures in a software system to be detected in real-time based only on boundary signals and a specification of its external behaviour. This feature is of particular benefit when software is purchased from other vendors and there is no direct access to source code. An implementation of real-time supervision has been shown to be capable of failure detection in a small telephone exchange.