Error Propagation Analysis of Software Architecture Specifications

As software architecture is becoming an important asset in the development of software systems, the study of quantitative assessment of software architectures is gaining importance due to its role in assessing their quality. 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 faultyrun traces with a reference, fault-free, trace. We use this framework to experimentally study error propagation in a medium-sized real-time system.