An automated software fault injection tool for robustness assessment of java COTs

In line with market demands and the need for technological innovations, designing and implementing software and hardware components for computing systems is growing in complexity. In order to cope with such complexity whilst meeting market needs, engineers often rely on design integration with commercial-of-the-shelf-components (COTs). In the case where lives and fortunes are at stake, there is a need to ensure dependability of COTs in terms of their robustness before they can be adopted in such an environment. However, it is not often possible to thoroughly test COTs for robustness because their design as well as source codes are usually unavailable. In order to address some of the above issues, we have developed an automated software fault injection tool, ca lled SFIT, based on the use of computational reflection and Java technology. This paper describes our experiences with SFIT performing robustness testing of Java COTs, called Jada, a Linda tuple space implementation.