Improving reliability of large software systems through software design and renovation

Software renovation is a method to improve existing software and to incorporate new features and system functions without developing entirely new software. The paper proposes a method to increase software reliability and to determine software components that need to be renovated. The method considers the changed code in base and non-base software, probability of a software error, and sets of static and dynamic connections in large software applications. The software is renovated if the probability of error exceeds threshold or the sets of static and dynamic connections are changed and the error in code exceeds threshold. A number of experiments with changing model parameters are used to show the usefulness of the method. The study is of interest in telecommunications.