caa a22 4500 60549584X CHVBK 20210128100533.0 cr unu---uuuuu 210128e20150601xx s 000 0 eng 10.1007/s11219-014-9235-5 doi (NATIONALLICENCE)springer-10.1007/s11219-014-9235-5 Exploring fault types, detection activities, and failure severity in an evolving safety-critical software system [Elektronische Daten] [Maggie Hamill, Katerina Goseva-Popstojanova] Many papers have been published on analysis and prediction of software faults and/or failures, but few established the links from software faults (i.e., the root causes) to (potential or observed) failures and addressed multiple attributes. This paper aims at filling this gap by studying types of faults that caused software failures, activities taking place when faults were detected or failures were reported, and the severity of failures. Furthermore, it explores the associations among these attributes and the trends within releases (i.e., pre-release and post-release) and across releases. The results are based on the data extracted from a safety-critical NASA mission, which follows an evolutionary development process. In particular, we analyzed 21 large-scale software components, which together constitute over 8,000 files and millions of lines of code. The main insights include: (1)only a few fault types were responsible for the majority of failures pre-release and post-release, and across releases. Analysis and testing activities detected the majority of failures caused by each fault type. (2)The distributions of fault types differed for pre-release and post-release failures. (3)The percentage of safety-critical failures was small overall, and their relative contribution increased on-orbit. (4)Both post-release failures and safety-critical failures were more heavily associated with coding faults than with any other type of faults. (5)Components that experienced high number of failures in one release were not necessarily among high failure-prone components in the subsequent release. (6)Components that experienced more failures pre-release were more likely to fail post-release, overall and for each release. Springer Science+Business Media New York, 2014 Software quality assurance nationallicence Fault type nationallicence Detection activity nationallicence Failure severity nationallicence Evolutionary development nationallicence Hamill Maggie Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, USA aut Goseva-Popstojanova Katerina Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA aut Software Quality Journal Springer US; http://www.springer-ny.com 23/2(2015-06-01), 229-265 0963-9314 23:2<229 2015 23 11219 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11219-014-9235-5 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 Metadata rights reserved Springer special CC-BY-NC licence nationallicence 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-springer NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11219-014-9235-5 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Hamill Maggie Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, USA aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Goseva-Popstojanova Katerina Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA aut NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Software Quality Journal Springer US; http://www.springer-ny.com 23/2(2015-06-01), 229-265 0963-9314 23:2<229 2015 23 11219