Sensitivity Analysis for a Scenario-Based Reliability Prediction Model

As a popular means for capturing behavioural requirements, scenariosshow how components interact to provide system-level functionality.If component reliability information is available, scenarioscan be used to perform early system reliability assessment. Inprevious work we presented an automated approach for predictingsoftware system reliability that extends a scenario specificationto model (1) the probability of component failure, and (2) scenariotransition probabilities. Probabilistic behaviour models ofthe system are then synthesized from the extended scenario specification.From the system behaviour model, reliability predictioncan be computed. This paper complements our previous work andpresents a sensitivity analysis that supports reasoning about howcomponent reliability and usage profiles impact on the overall systemreliability. For this purpose, we present how the system reliabilityvaries as a function of the components reliabilities and thescenario transition probabilities. Taking into account the concurrentnature of component-based software systems, we also analysethe effect of implied scenarios prevention into the sensitivity analysisof our reliability prediction technique

Reliability prediction in model driven development

Evaluating the implications of an architecture design early in the software development lifecycle is important in order to reduce costs of development. Reliability is an important concern with regard to the correct delivery of software system service. Recently, the UML Profile for Modeling Quality of Service has defined a set of UML extensions to represent dependability concerns (including reliability) and other non-functional requirements in early stages of the software development lifecycle. Our research has shown that these extensions are not comprehensive enough to support reliability analysis for model-driven software engineering, because the description of reliability characteristics in this profile lacks support for certain dynamic aspects that are essential in modeling reliability. In this work, we define a profile for reliability analysis by extending the UML 2.0 specification to support reliability prediction based on scenario specifications. A UML model specified using the profile is translated to a labelled transition system (LTS), which is used for automated reliability prediction and identification of implied scenarios; the results of this analysis are then fed back to the UML model. The result is a comprehensive framework for addressing software reliability modeling, including analysis and evolution of reliability predictions. We exemplify our approach using the Boiler System used in previous work and demonstrate how reliability analysis results can be integrated into UML models

Baire categories on small complexity classes and meager–comeager laws

We introduce two resource-bounded Baire category notions on small complexity classes such as P, QUASIPOLY, SUBEXP and PSPACE and on probabilistic classes such as BPP, which differ on how the corresponding finite extension strategies are computed. We give an alternative characterization of small sets via resource-bounded Banach-Mazur games. As an application of the first notion, we show that for almost every language A (i.e. all except a meager class) computable in subexponential time, PA = BPPA. We also show that almost all languages in PSPACE do not have small nonuniform complexity. We then switch to the second Baire category notion (called locally-computable), and show that the class SPARSE is meager in P. We show that in contrast to the resource-bounded measure case, meager–comeager laws can be obtained for many standard complexity classes, relative to locally-computable Baire category on BPP and PSPACE. Another topic where locally-computable Baire categories differ from resource-bounded measure is regarding weak-completeness: we show that there is no weak-completeness notion in P based on locally-computable Baire categories, i.e. every P-weakly-complete set is complete for P. We also prove that the class of complete sets for P under Turing-logspace reductions is meager in P, if P is not equal to DSPACE (log n), and that the same holds unconditionally for QUASIPOLY. Finally we observe that locally-computable Baire categories are incomparable with all existing resource-bounded measure notions on small complexity classes, which might explain why those two settings seem to differ so fundamentally