A Framework for Experimental Error Propagation Analysis of Software Architecture Specifications

Early assessment of software quality attributes plays a central role in developing better quality software. Error propagation between software system components is a quantitative factor that reflects on the reliability of a software product. We introduce a framework for experimental error propagation analysis. This framework addresses the problem of estimating error propagation at the architecture design phase. Our approach is based on fault injection and post-simulation trace analysis. We compute error propagation estimates through comparison of faulty-run traces with a reference, faultfree, trace. We use this framework to experimentally study error propagation in a medium-sized real-time system. We believe that this framework can be further extended to allow for experimental analysis of change propagation and requirements propagation