Title :
A dimensionality model approach to testing and improving software robustness
Author :
Pan, Jiantao ; Koopman, Philip ; Siewiorek, Daniel
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Carnegie Mellon Univ., Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Abstract :
Software robustness problems may hinder the use of Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) software modules and legacy software modules in mission-critical and safety-critical applications. This research focuses on hardening COTS and legacy software modules against robustness failures triggered by exceptional inputs. An automated approach is presented that is capable of identifying the triggers of the robustness failures. A fault model-the dimensionality model-is used to guide analysis. An experiment is described which demonstrates the feasibility of automating the process of analyzing failure causes and hardening against certain data types in POSIX function calls, for example, NULL pointer values and scalar data types such as INT and FLOAT. The final goal of this research is to provide users a tool to harden COTS and legacy software modules automatically
Keywords :
program testing; safety-critical software; software fault tolerance; software performance evaluation; COTS software modules; CRASH scale metric; NULL pointer values; POSIX function calls; automated approach; automated protection code generation; automatic testing; combinational testing method; dimensionality model approach; exception handling; failure causes; fault model; legacy software modules; mission-critical applications; robustness failures; robustness testing; safety-critical applications; scalar data types; software robustness; Application software; Computer crashes; Costs; Failure analysis; Mission critical systems; Robustness; Software safety; Software testing; System testing; Systems engineering and theory;
Conference_Titel :
AUTOTESTCON '99. IEEE Systems Readiness Technology Conference, 1999. IEEE
Conference_Location :
San Antonio, TX
Print_ISBN :
0-7803-5432-X
DOI :
10.1109/AUTEST.1999.800419
