Argumentation Pattern: An Approach to Issuing Software Reliability Case

Abstract

Software is a major component of most important system applications. Because the software component typically provides critical functions, faults in the software may cause the system to fail in a significant way. Such system failures due to direct software faults are what we classify as “software failures.” Thus, it is important to use methods and techniques that provide evidence that the software component has been designed, implemented, tested, installed, and, as necessary, updated without faults that might result in undesirable system failures. Originate from safety case, which has been used in the aerospace and nuclear industries, reliability case is one method to make sure that the software’s reliability has been reached. This paper briefly reviews some of the previous research in the area of safety case. And then introduce the concept of reliability case. This is followed by a discussion of the approach to issuing reliability case—argumentation pattern. Finally, we draw the conclusion and discuss related future works.