Design of Simulator for Reliability Estimation of Component Based Software System

This is the age of Rapid Application Development (RAD). To achieve the goal of RAD, Component Based Software Development (CBSD) can be of great help. Here Commercialoff- the- shelf (COTS) components are deployed together to make a larger application. These components are designed and developed independent of each other and independent of the application they are being used in. It has the advantages in the form of adaptability, scalability and reusability. Like in any other system here too the overall reliability of the system is a function of reliabilities of all the components used in the system and their interfaces with each other. In this paper an attempt has been made to compute the reliability of the system as a function of reliabilities of its components. Components along a path, called Course-of-execution, are executed during each simulation run. Starting from any component during any Course-of-execution, control is transferred to any other component as per the Markov process [7, 8, 9]. If we are able to reach the last component in the system, which is assumed to be a terminating component, that pass is assumed to be successful otherwise it is assumed to be unsuccessful. At the end we compute reliability of the system by dividing the number of successful passes by total no of simulation runs and get the reliability of the component based system.