A Software Quality Methodology That Assesses the Fault Tolerance of Un-tested Inputs

Increasing amounts of the Department of Defense's software costs are going into safety-critical systems. Our innovation will allow Rome Laboratory to automatically assess the fault-tolerance of its software with a method distinct from the traditional methods of formal analysis or empirical software testing. We will apply a simulated fault-injection scheme that exercises the region of the input space that is frequently termed as the "ultra-dependable" region. This innovation will accept code and a user supplied operational distribution, and automatically assess the fault- tolerance of the software for inputs upon which the code is highly unlikely to be tested. The innovation will automatically determine where additional fault-tolerant mechanisms are necessary, to ensure fault-tolerance throughout the software's life, not simply in the early stages of deployment. The project objective is to show that such a tool is feasible and the model is theoretically sound, and the anticipated results of this effort are a detailed design for the tool.