What is software reliability in Software Engineering? 

Software engineering involves the process of designing, building, and testing of software applications as per the needs of the users, by employing software principles. It includes building products that serve specific purposes and which can find solutions to the problem in a way that is less time consuming and cost effective.

In this article, we will discuss Software Reliability.

The probability of failure-free software operation or the probability that a software system successfully completes its assigned task in a specific time and specific environment is known as software reliability. Often the major contributing factor of software reliability is the high complexity of the software. Software reliability, along with functionality, workability, capability, installability, maintainability, and documentation, is an important aspect of software quality. Software engineering courses can help you master all of these easily.

While it’s easy to draw a connection between software and hardware reliability, the two have fundamental variances that lead to separate failure modes. Software faults are more difficult to visualize, detect, and fix than the hardware defects, which are mostly physical faults.

Unlike hardware, the software doesn’t wear out, so the problems in software are usually due to some errors or software bugs and some flaws in the software design.

Importance of software reliability-

• Users are likely to discard unreliable software.
• It’s more challenging to improve unreliable systems.
• The costs of a software failure could be tremendous.
• Unreliable software might have hidden faults that can compromise data of users without any warning and have unforeseeable consequences, i.e., the inefficiency is unpredictable.
• Information loss can be caused by unreliable systems.

Reliable software can significantly lower the risk of hidden defects that expose user data and at the same time avoid the high costs that might result from system failure.Get to know more about hiring a right software development team, so no problems will occur in the future.

To express the reliability of software quantitatively, the reliability metrics are used. Which metric is to be used for this purpose depends on the type of software system to which it can be applied and also depends on the various requirements of the application domain.

The reliability metrics applied throughout the testing process are divided into two sections.

• The first step is to check that the application’s functional behaviour matches the documentation’s requirements. As a result, any discrepancy in this step will be reported and resolved as part of the defect correction, and the defect life cycle will be monitored.
• The second step is evaluating the program’s functionalities and performance.

 The first metric is black box testing method, whereas the second is white box testing method.

Reliability Metrics

Two Software Reliability Techniques

Prediction Model:  It uses the historical data and is usually made prior to the coding or test phases. It is considered unreliable for making predictions during or after the development.

Estimation Model: It is conducted later in the SDLC cycle, when all essential software aspects are ready, and it leverages current data.

Conclusion

Software Reliability is difficult to accomplish due to the increasing complexity of software. IIT in software engineering will help you develop key software engineering skills to work on IoT, Cloud, and Blockchain technologies.

The application of quality attributes like error prevention and elimination, and measurement methodologies at each level of the Software Development Life Cycle is critical to achieving high software reliability.

FAQs

1. What are the properties of software that make it reliable?

• Compliance: The potential of the software product to adhere to reliability standards, conventions, or rules.
• Integrity : The level of accuracy of the data is within a system. While data inaccuracies may appear minor, they can have a huge impact when crucial decisions are made based on them.
• Maturity: The degree to which a process is well defined, managed, measured, and controlled.
• Fault Recovery: software’s ability to detect and recover from a fault that is happening or has already occurred.

2. What are the most important factors that influence software’s reliability?

Factors that influence software’s reliability include size and complexity of the code, the operational environment, skill sets and experience of development personnel, the process used etc.