%A YI Ze-long, WEN Yu-mei, LIN Yan-min, CHEN Wei-ting and LV Guan-yu %T Impacts of Correlation Effects among Multi-layer Faults on Software Reliability Growth Processes %0 Journal Article %D 2018 %J Computer Science %R 10.11896/j.issn.1002-137X.2018.02.042 %P 241-248 %V 45 %N 2 %U {https://www.jsjkx.com/CN/abstract/article_1108.shtml} %8 2018-02-15 %X Faults in the software systems,which eventually cause the system failures,are usually connected with each other in complicated ways.Software reliability growth models based on non-homogeneous Poisson processes are widely adopted tools when describing the stochastic failure behavior and measuring the reliability growth in software systems.Considering a group of correlated faults,a new model was built to examine the reliability of software systems and assess the model’s performance from real-world data sets.Numerical studies show that the new model captures correlation effects among multi-layer faults,fits the failure data well and performs better than traditional models.The optimal software release policy,which considers both the reliability requirement and the software testing cost,was also formally studied.It is found that if the correlation effects among different layers of faults are ignored by the software testing team,the best time to release the software package to the market will be much earlier while the overall cost will be much higher.