CSE 8317 (Fall, 2005)

Important SRE/SSE Papers

Here is a list of some important papers or book chapters in the area of software reliability engineering (SRE) and software safety engineering (SSE). The contents of these papers/chapters roughly correspond to the topics that we will be covering in our CSE 8317 class, so they can be used as additional reading material.
Note: A new section of recent papers added on 8/19/05.

Papers/Chapters Available Online and Related References

  1. Tian-AIC paper available online.
    Notice: pages 36-40 excluded => relevant contents covered by Tian-TSE02 paper below.
    References most relevant to this class: 24 (SRE survey), 38 (OP), 39 (SRE applications and recent development), and 49 (data treatment) listed at the end of the paper.
  2. Tian-TSE02 paper available online.
    References most relevant to this class: 2, 4, 9, 17 (all about data treatment) listed at the end of the paper.
  3. Tian-TSE04 paper available online.
    References most relevant to this class: 1, 3, 11, 14, and 15 (all about web traffic/quality/reliability measurement) listed at the end of the paper.
  4. Following references from the online bibliography of Tian/SQE book:
    (Chen et al., 2001); (Duran and Ntafos, 1984); (Frankl et al., 1998); (Gerhart et al., 1994); (Hamlet and Taylor, 1990); (Hamlet et al., 2001); (Horgan and Mathur, 1995); (Malaiya et al., 2002); (King et al., 2000)
    Reference style used: (Author-last-name, year) for single author items, (AuthorA and AuthorB, year) for double author items, or (AuthorA et al., year) for items with three or more authors.

Other SRE/Testing Papers

  1. R. W. Butler and G. B. Finelli, The Infeasibility of Quantifying the Reliability of Life-Critical Real-Time Software, IEEE Trans. on Software Engineering, 19(1):3-12, Jan, 1993.
  2. S. Frolund and R. Guerraoui, e-Transactions: End-to-End Reliability for Three-Tier Architectures, IEEE Trans. on Software Engineering, 28(4):378-395, April 2002.
  3. C. Huang, M. R. Lyu, and S. Kuo, A unified Scheme of Some Nonhomogenous Poisson Process Models for Software Reliability Estimation, IEEE Trans. on Software Engineering, 29(3):261-269, March 2003.
  4. B. Littlewood and D. Wright, Some Conservative Stopping Rules for the Operational Testing of Safety-Critical Software, IEEE Trans. on Software Engineering, 23(11):673-683, Nov, 1997.
  5. M. R. Lyu, S. Rangarajan, and A. P. A. van Moorsel, Optimal Allocation of Test Resources for Software Reliability Growth Modeling in Software Development, IEEE Trans. on Reliability, 51(2):183-192, June, 2002.
  6. J. M. Voas and L. Kassab, Using Assertions to Make Untestable Software More Testable, Software Quality Professional, 1(4):31-40, Sep, 1999.
  7. A. P. Wood, Software Reliability from the Customer View, IEEE Computer, 36(8):37-42, Aug., 2003.

Other SSE Papers

  1. N. E. Fenton and M. Neil, "A Strategy for Improving Safety Related Software Engineering Standards". IEEE Trans. on Software Engineering, 24(11):1002-1013, Nov., 1998.
  2. S. Gerhart, D. Craigen and T. Ralston. Regulatory case studies. IEEE Software, 11(1):30--39, Jan. 1994.
  3. J. Knight and B. Littlewood. Critical task of writing dependable software. IEEE Software, 11(1):16--20, Jan. 1994.
  4. N. G. Leveson. Software safety in embedded computer systems. Communications of the ACM, 36(2):34--46, Feb. 1991.
  5. N. G. Leveson. High-pressure steam engines and computer software. IEEE Computer, pages 65--73, Oct. 1994.
  6. N. G. Leveson, A systems-theoretic approach to safety in software-intensive systems, IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, Vol.1, No.1, pp.66-86, Jan., 2004.
  7. N. G. Leveson and C. Turner. An investigation of the Therac-25 accidents. IEEE Computer, pages 19--41, July 1993.
  8. D. L. Parnas, A. J. Schouwen, and S. P. Kwan. Evaluation of safety-critical software. Communications of the ACM, 33(6):636--648, June 1990.
Notice that the papers #2-#3 above are from the same issue: IEEE Software, 11(1), Jan. 1994 (and a few other papers too!). The next three are by Leveson, the author of our textbook on SSE, with #4 a particularly good survey paper on SSE.

Recent Surveys in a Book

Anthony Finkelstein, editor, "The Future of Software Engineering", ACM Press, 2000.
Survey papers relevant to this class include:

  1. Robyn Lutz: "Software Engineering for Safety: A Roadmap".
  2. Bev Littlewood and Lorenzo Strigini: "Software Reliability and Dependability: A Roadmap".

Some Recent Papers (newly added section)

  1. Robyn R. Lutz Ines Carmen Mikulski, "Empirical Analysis of Safety-Critical Anomalies During Operations", IEEE Trans. on Software Engineering, Vol.30, No.3, pp.172-180, March, 2004.
  2. Bojan Cukic, "The Virtues of Assessing Software Reliability Early", IEEE Software, Vol.22, No.3, pp.50-53, May/June, 2005.
  3. D.R. Jeske, X. Zhang, and L. Pham, "Adjusting Software Failure Rates That Are Estimated From Test Data", IEEE Trans. on Reliability, Vol.54, No.1, pp.107-114, March, 2005.

Prepared by Jeff Tian (tian@engr.smu.edu).
Posted: Aug. 5, 2005. Last update: Aug. 19, 2005.

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