Quality Assurance: Software Quality Assurance Made Easy pdfdrive com

Importance of Software Reliability Testing
Today, software applications are important in any industry. The various
applications make software reliability testing become an essential part of the
process. Software reliability testing has become a tool to measure in quantitative
and scientific terms the latest software engineering technologies.
In order to improve the process of software development and software
performance, assessment of reliability must take place. Software reliability
testing is useful for software managers and users. To verify software reliability,
it is important to have enough test cases within a specific period for testing to
commence. Testing must be able to identify defects that can cause software
failure. In general, if software function more often used, it must have a greater
number of test cases to ensure that it can run without failure.

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Kinds of Software Reliability Testing
Testing includes regression testing, load testing, and feature testing. Regression
testing tries to discover new errors, which may result from fixing a previous
error. Usually, it occurs after every update or change in the software.
Load testing, on the other hand, aims to verify the software performance under
maximum load. In general, software response time may decrease after some
amount of workload. For example, a website may undergo load testing to
discover how many users it can support simultaneously without any decrease in
response time. Lastly, feature testing monitors the software features for any
errors or bugs.

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How to Measure Software Reliability
The mean time between failures includes the mean time to repair and the mean
time to failure. If there is a restriction on operation time, a person can use
compressed time accelerations to limit the testing time. The mean time to failure
takes into consideration the calendar time, number of on-off cycles, and
operating time. If calendar time is the focus, it is advisable to use intensified
stress testing.
Software’s reliability increases when there are no more bugs or errors
discovered. For example, if the mean time between failures is 1000 hours for
standard software, the software to be tested must be able to work for 1,000 hours
continuously. The mean time to repair is the time needed to fix the error while
the mean time to failure is the time difference between two succeeding failures.

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