Software reliability testing

Software reliability testing is a field of software testing that relates to testing a software's ability to function, given environmental conditions, for a particular amount of time. Software reliability testing helps discover many problems in the software design and functionality.Software reliability is the probability that software will work properly in a specified environment and for a given amount of time. Using the following formula, the probability of failure is calculated by testing a sample of all available input states.Mean Time Between Failure(MTBF)=Mean Time To Failure(MTTF)+ Mean Time To Repair(MTTR)Software availability is measured in terms of mean time between failures (MTBF).The main objective of the reliability testing is to test software performance under given conditions without any type of corrective measure using known fixed procedures considering its specifications.The application of computer software has crossed into many different fields, with software being an essential part of industrial, commercial and military systems. Because of its many applications in safety critical systems, software reliability is now an important research area. Although software engineering is becoming the fastest developing technology of the last century, there is no complete, scientific, quantitative measure to assess them. Software reliability testing is being used as a tool to help assess these software engineering technologies.Software reliability testing includes feature testing, load testing, and regression testing.Reliability testing is more costly compared to other types of testing. Thus while doing reliability testing, proper management and planning is required. This plan includes testing process to be implemented, data about its environment, test schedule, test points etc.Studies during development and design of software help for improving the reliability of a product. Reliability testing is essentially performed to eliminate the failure mode of the software. Life testing of the product should always be done after the design part is finished or at least the complete design is finalized. Failure analysis and design improvement is achieved through testings.The method of operational testing is used to test the reliability of software. Here one checks how the software works in its relevant operational environment. The main problem with this type of evaluation is constructing such an operational environment. Such type of simulation is observed in some industries like nuclear industries, in aircraft etc. Predicting future reliability is a part of reliability evaluation.