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New software reliability paradigm sought

Special Correspondent

CHENNAI: The evolution of a new software reliability paradigm — which defines the efficiency of a software operating in a given environment within the designed range of input without failure — was the need of the hour, S.L. Sarnot, Director General, Directorate of Standardization Testing and Quality Certification, (STQC), Union Department of Information and Technology, said on Monday.

Software systems increasingly determine everyday life and this calls for a change in perceptions of the reliability of the software, he said during the inauguration of the International Conference on Reliability and Safety Engineering. The event was organised by the Indian Institute of Technology (Kanpur) and the Centre for Reliability.

Reliability was an indicator of the consistent performance of a product or service over time and was determined by aspects such as the average time between failures, frequency and duration of failures and residual life of the product.

At present, there was an increased awareness of the criticality of reducing hidden errors in software as the influx of computers into financial and security-related operations required a degree of data integrity.

However, software engineers had no exposure to reliability-engineering tools. Also, in most organisational structures, a communication gap existed between hardware and software specialists and these barriers needed to be broken down. A system-level approach to the overall reliability problem is preferred rather than isolation of either hardware or software.

The time was ripe for unifying several research areas into a unified investigation of system reliability, Mr. Sarnot said.

R.B. Misra, Head, Reliability Engineering Centre, IIT-Kharagpur, also spoke.

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