Tech Views
By Lon R. Dean, DoD Software Tech News, Editor
This issue of the DoD Software Tech News is devoted to Software Quality Assurance (SQA). As stated in one the articles, SQA encompasses all aspects of the software development process including requirements, safety, reliability, measurement and testing. The four articles in this newsletter take various approaches when looking at the dependability of software, but with the perspective of the software acquisition in mind.
In the lead article, Dr. Linda Rosenberg of Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) discusses the "Lessons Learned in Software Quality Assurance" from 10 years of working in the Quality Assurance Directorate at NASA’s GSFC. This excellent article contains excerpts from the recently published book, Managing Software Engineering Knowledge. The article describes 12 lessons learned ranging from "Hardware Does NOT Equal Software" to "Risk Management is NOT Optional". In this editor’s opinion, the lessons learned within the NASA community are valuable and applicable to any software assurance activities when tailored to the reader’s specific situation.
In the article "Software Rejuvenation: Avoiding Failures Even When There Are Faults," Dr. Larry Bernstein presents a case study where a communications protocol software was built containing a memory leak that would crash the system. The case study describes the software failing under sthMss tests and illustrates how once software rejuvenation library software was bound into the communications software, the protocol no longer failed, even though the bug was still present. Dr. Bernstein encourages readers to repeat this work in their organization to convince others of the role of software design technology in realizing trustworthy software.
In the third article in this newsletter, "Assessing Acquired Software via Software Fault Injection" Jeffrey Voas of Cigital Inc., describes software fault injection as a form of software testing which allows software acquirers a means to determine fault tolerance and trustworthiness of software systems. The article details the differences between software fault injection methods and system-level, black box testing traditionally used. The goal of software fault injection is to answer the question "What if _____ happened?" This article lists several software fault injection techniques used to answer this question. The article also defines software fault injection, and describes what type of software these techniques could be used on.
In the final article, "Characterizing Software Dependability from Multiple Stakeholders’ Perspective" Patricia Costa and Ioana Rus of the Fraunhofer Center for Experimental Software Engineering present a case study to illustrate a method they have developed for characterizing the dependability of a software application. The illustration the authors chose was a case study where they used this method to determine the dependability or trustworthiness of a web-based software tool used in mediating on-line discussions. This article presents the value of this methodology by describing the software dependability characterization methodology activities step-by-step, and the conclusions drawn.
Please provide any comments or questions to me.
Author Contact Information
Lon R. Dean
STN Editor
775 Daedalian Dr
Rome, NY 13441
Phone: (800) 214-7921
news-editor@dacs.dtic.mil
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