The OLAP and Data Warehousing Approaches for Analysis and Sharing of Results from Dependability Evaluation Experiments

Two important questions on experimental dependability evaluation remain largely unanswered: 1) how to analyze the usually large amount of raw data produced in dependability evaluation experiments and 2) how to compare results from different experiments or results from similar experiments across different systems. These problems are also common to other dependability evaluation techniques such as the ones based on simulation, or even to the analysis of field data on computer faults. We propose the use of data warehousing technologies to store raw results from different experiments/setups in a common multidimensional structure where raw data can be analyzed and shared world wide by means of web-enabled OLAP (On-Line Analytical Processing) tools. This paper describes how to use the proposed approach in a concrete example of dependability evaluation experiment.