Software reliability — what is it?

Abstract Software has become a household necessity in today's world but little has been done to measure its reliability for the consumer. Since software failure has a different basis than hardware failure, existing reliability theory cannot be applied directly: a new software unique theory needs to be defined. Current software practice relies on software quality measures to describe software reliability but recent work has identified both theory and practice for appropriate software reliability analysis. This paper discusses: the need for software reliability analysis in order to more accurately describe system reliability, the shortcomings of current practice, and both the direction of new work in, and the future roles for, software reliability analysis.