An approach towards reliable software

After recalling the various general approaches to reliable software, this paper stresses the necessity and rationale for quantitative and/or automated assessment of software “reliability” and “quality”. As an illustration, techniques for quantitative evaluation of software reliability are first surveyed. Then, a more general scheme that encompasses software reliability as a particular case is proposed; software quality is shown to be dependent on various factors that can be control led or measured through a set of analyzers and computer aids. In the author's opinion, the proposed control and measurement procedures, still quite unexploited, should profitably supplement the other more conventional approaches to reliable software.

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