Dependable systems are characterized by a number of attributes including: reliability, availability, safety and security. For some attributes (namely for reliability, availability, safety), there exist probability-based theoretic foundations, enabling the application of dependability analysis techniques. The goal of dependability analysis is to forecast the values of dependability attributes, b...

Dependability and security are two system concerns that cannot be considered independently. Solving a dependability problem might introduce new challenges for security and vice versa. In this paper we contribute to this discussion with a corresponding example in the domain of online auctioning where we will show how an improvement to system dependability can introduce new security challenges.

Assessing the quality of service of a computer system is a difficult task. A lot of work has been conducted on evaluating quality of service attributes like performance, robustness, and dependability. Two approaches used for evaluating performance and robustness are modeling and benchmarking. For evaluating dependability, modeling can be used either alone or combined with fault injection [Sie92...

Dependable distributed systems are diÆcult to build. This is particularly true if they have dependability requirements that change during the execution of an application and are built with commercial o -the-shelf hardware. In that case, fault tolerance can be achieved using middleware, and mechanisms must be provided to communicate the dependability requirements of a distributed application to ...

The aim of this tutorial is to provide an insight on how the structuring of software systems at the architectural level is fundamental for the development of dependable systems. Taking as a basis the different dependability means, we show how dependability should be considered at the architectural level, and the impact this should have when developing dependable systems. Existing architectural ...

Service composition is fundamental in development of Web service oriented applications. Dependability of composite services is of significant importance since it directly impacts users' experience. However, dependability of a composite service may change over time as a result of inevitable changes in component services. In addition, users may also pose varying dependability requirements to meet...

Grids should not just be facilitating advances in science and engineering; rather they should also be making an impact on our daily lives by enabling sophisticated applications such as new consumer services and support for homeland defense. This is not possible today because the poor grid dependability—which is tolerated by scientific users—would be unacceptable in critical infrastructure appli...