Software failure investigation : a near-miss analysis approach

Description

This book reviews existing operational software failure analysis techniques and proposes near-miss analysis as a novel, and new technique for investigating and preventing software failures. The authors provide details on how near-miss analysis techniques focus on the time-window before the software failure actually unfolds, so as to detect the high-risk conditions that can lead to a major failure. They detail how by alerting system users of an upcoming software failure, the detection of near misses provides an opportunity to collect at runtime failure-related data that is complete and relevant. They present a near-miss management systems (NMS) for detecting upcoming software failures, which can contribute significantly to the improvement of the accuracy of the software failure analysis. A prototype of the NMS is implemented and is discussed in the book. The authors give a practical hands-on approach towards doing software failure investigations by means of near-miss analysis that is of use to industry and academia Front Matter ....Pages i-ix Introduction (Jan Eloff, Madeleine Bihina Bella)....Pages 1-6 Software Failures: An Overview (Jan Eloff, Madeleine Bihina Bella)....Pages 7-24 Near-Miss Analysis: An Overview (Jan Eloff, Madeleine Bihina Bella)....Pages 25-37 A Methodology for Investigating Software Failures Using Digital Forensics and Near-Miss Analysis (Jan Eloff, Madeleine Bihina Bella)....Pages 39-56 A Well-Defined Model for Near-Miss Detection and Prioritisation (Jan Eloff, Madeleine Bihina Bella)....Pages 57-68 An Architecture for a Near-Miss Management System (NMS) (Jan Eloff, Madeleine Bihina Bella)....Pages 69-74 Practical Demonstration of Conducting a Near-Miss Analysis Investigation for Software Failures (Jan Eloff, Madeleine Bihina Bella)....Pages 75-100 Back Matter ....Pages 101-119