Achieving Quality Software: Including Its Application to Safety-Related Systems - Softcover

Smith, D.J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 9401042438 ISBN 13: 9789401042437

Publisher: Springer, 2012

Synopsis

The rapid growth in use of programmable technology, in nearly all sectors of Engineering, is a well-known established trend and one which there is every reason to believe will continue into the foreseeable future. The drivers of this trend include cost, flexibility, rich functionality and certain reliability and safety advantages. However, as explained in this book, these advantages have to be carefully weighed against a number of dis­ advantages which, amongst other things, have fundamental implications for reliability and safety. Ideally, a programmable system would be viewed as a fusion of hardware, software and user (or 'skinware'), operating under a set of environmental conditions. To date, such a unifying model does not exist and so hardware, software and human factors are still considered largely as three separate disciplines, albeit with certain interdependencies. Established techniques are available which enable the engineer to develop systems comprising purely hardware components to a prescribed reliability and performance. Software, however, is fundamentally different in a number of ways, and does not lend itself to equivalent analysis. A major problem with software is its poor 'visibility', and consequently the great difficulty in understanding and predicting its behaviour in all cir­ cumstances. This results in the ever-present software design flaws, or 'bugs', which have plagued the software industry from its beginnings.

About this title

About the Author

David J. Smith, past Chairman of the Safety and Reliability Society is the author of six successful works on reliability, quality, software and statistics. He has been directly associated with this branch of engineering, in the process and telecommunications industries, for over 20 years and is well known for his courses and workshops on these subjects. He currently runs his own consultancy.

Edition details

• Publisher: Springer
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 9401042438
• ISBN 13: 9789401042437
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 300