A Two Dimensional Scheme To Evaluate The Adequacy Of Fault Tolerance Testing

Fault-tolerant design becomes increasingly important with the growth in the demand for non-stop computer based service. The criticality of fault-tolerant software suggests the importance of testing it to examine how well it can tolerate unforeseen faults. In the past, researchers have proposed several techniques, built and used tools towards this end. A representative along the efforts is the AAS fault tolerance testing [4]. Indispensable for such tools is a notion of “adequacy” of a test for fault tolerance to reflect how well the test has been conducted. An “adequacy” measure is suggests possible improvements in a test. It also serves as a basis to decide the release time of the software. We propose a new quantitative adequacy criteria that can be measured with the aid of a prototype tool under implementation. Our criteria and the underlying rationale are mentioned in the remainder of this paper.