Method for determining the reliability parameters of software for complex decision support systems

Military University of Technology, Kaliskiego 2 str., 00-908 Warsaw, Poland

Abstract

The testing stage, creating great opportunities to verify and shape software reliability, significantly increases the cost of its production. The effectiveness of the work related to testing, expressed by the interdependence of the level of program product reliability and the cost of testing it, strongly depends on the adopted testing strategy, specifying the organization and scope of the work performed. In this situation, therefore, there is a need to define the conditions for a compromise in terms of reliability and cost requirements set for the software. The practical finding of this compromise can be greatly facilitated if there are possibilities to formally assess the level of software quality and the cost of testing it using appropriate indicators. The paper attempts to describe a method of determining a program testing strategy as a result of solving a two-criteria optimization problem, with the program reliability coefficient and the cost of testing as component criteria. The paper consists of description of the program testing process and mathematical model of this process, formulation of the problem of two-criteria optimization of the program testing strategy, remarks on method of solving the problem that has been formulated. proposed. To illustrate the method of finding an optimal testing strategy that has been proposed a numerical example is considered.