A tool for statistical modeling and estimation of reliability functions for software: SMERFS

Abstract With the tremendous growth in computer software, the demand has arisen for producing cost-effective reliable software. Over the last 10 years an area of research has developed that attempts to address this problem by estimating a program's current reliability by modeling either the times between error detections or the error counts in past testing periods. This paper describes a new tool for interactive software reliability analysis using the computer. This computer program allows the user to perform a complete reliability analysis using any of eight well-known models appearing in the literature. The paper illustrates some of the capabilities of the program by means of an analysis of a set of simulated error data.