Enhancing competitiveness via a public fault and failure data repository

Abstract

Today most software companies are under pressure to get reliable software products built quickly. To assist both industry and researchers, the Information Technology Laboratory (ITL) at NIST in the US, has initiated the Reference Data: Software Error, Fault, Failure Data Collection & Analysis Repository Project. Usually referred to as the EFF Project, the project treats the term "error" as the human action that produces the incorrect result; the term "fault" as the manifestation of an error in an artifact, and the term "failure" as the result of a fault that has been activated, or triggered, during operation of the software. The EFF project is collecting and analyzing data from either the development and maintenance processes or the operation of a delivered computer system. The data, with all proprietary information removed, will become available through a publicly accessible World Wide Web facility at NIST. Researchers may use the data for their experimentation. The information technology industry and researchers may use the resulting reference data to assist in many types of decisions for building better end user products and for developing new methods and tools to support industry. NIST encourages companies to consider the benefits of a public database. NIST will accept new or existing private data to augment the repository. Such data may be from either the software development or maintenance process, or may consist of failure data derived from systems already in service.