Computing Reviews

Software reliability: measurement, prediction, application
Musa J., Iannino A., Okumoto K., McGraw-Hill, Inc.,New York, NY,1987.Type:Book
Date Reviewed: 12/01/87

This book is divided into four parts consisting of 16 chapters on the following topics:

  • :9N(1) Introduction to Software Reliability

  • (2) Selected Models

  • (3) Applications

  • (4) System Definition

  • (5) Parameter Determination

  • (6) Project-Specific Techniques

  • (7) Application Procedures

  • (8) Implementation Planning

  • (9) Software Reliability Modeling

  • (10) Markovian Models

  • (11) Descriptions of Specific Models

  • (12) Parameter Estimation

  • (13) Comparison of Software Reliability Models

  • (14) Calendar Time Modeling

  • (15) Failure Time Adjustment for Evolving Programs

  • (16) State of the Art

The book gives a good and complete description of software reliability and related problems. Measurements, modeling, and predictions are discussed in detail. An appendix gives some insight into the supporting statistical theory. The authors demonstrate their broad background both in the subject and its solid theoretical foundation. The discussion on the relation between failure rate and mean time to failure is helpful. For practical applications it might have been useful to give more numerical examples. The measures being used (called parameters) are more or less considered a given. The book collects and describes these measures. It stops short of giving a complete measurement theory.

All in all, the book provides a very good summary on the subject of reliability; a lot of the material included has not been published before. I recommend it for everybody involved in the programming development process, program quality, or reliability.

Reviewer:  H. Remus Review #: CR111861

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