Handbook of Software Reliability Engineering

Foreword by Alfred V. Aho, Columbia University

In complex software systems, reliability is the most important aspect of software quality, but one that has often been the most elusive to achieve. Since more and more of the world's activities and systems are dependent on software, achieving the appropriate level of software reliability consistently and economically is crucial. Software failures make newspaper headlines because at best they inconvenience people and in extreme cases kill them.

It is refreshing to see a book that has the potential to make a significant improvement to software reliability. The Handbook of Software Reliability Engineering is an important milestone in the history of software reliability engineering. Michael R. Lyu has assembled a team of leading experts to document the best current practices in the field. The coverage is comprehensive, including material on fault prevention, fault removal, fault tolerance, and failure forecasting. Theory, models, metrics, measurements, processes, analysis, and estimation techniques are presented. The book is filled with proven methods, illustrative examples, and representative test results from working systems in the field. An important component of the book is a set of reliability tools that can be used to apply the techniques presented.

The subject is treated with the rigor that is characteristic of a mature engineering discipline. The book stresses mathematical models for evaluating reliability trade-offs, and shows how these models can be applied to the development of software systems.

With the publication of this Handbook, the field of software reliability engineering has come of age. This book is must reading for all software engineers concerned with software reliability.

Alfred V. Aho
Columbia University
New York, New York