SA based software deployment reliability estimation: Problem space, challenges and strategies

Software architecture (SA) has been widely advocated as an effective abstraction for modeling, implementing, and evolving complex software systems such as those in distributed, decentralized, heterogeneous, mobile, and pervasive environments. We intend to investigate two problems related to the domain of those environments: software deployment and reliability. Software deployment is a post-production activity that is performed for or by the customer of a piece of software. Though many approaches for Architecture-based reliability research, little work has been done in incorporating software deployment into architecture-based reliability estimation. Thus, this paper describes which information constitute SA based software deployment reliability model and how to obtain available information for the model. The system reliability estimation at an architectural level includes software deployment, architectural style and component replica.