A data collection environment for software reliability research

With software being used in more critical applications, software reliability engineering (SRE) is an increasingly important field of software engineering. Collecting data for software reliability research, however, is difficult. Software projects do not always collect data that is complete or consistent enough for SRM research. In addition, reliability data is very sensitive. Corporations are reluctant to provide it to outside parties for use in research. The authors describe ongoing research at IIT and their approach to data collection for software reliability research. They have developed a data collection package that can be used by people who may be interested in donating software reliability data. In addition, they are developing a simulation environment for use in software reliability research. The environment is, in essence, a laboratory in which to conduct software reliability experiments.<>