Certification of Software Components

Reuse is becoming one of the key areas in dealing with the cost and quality of software systems. An important issue is the reliability of the components, hence making certification of software components a critical area. The objective of this article is to try to describe methods that can be used to certify and measure the ability of software components to fulfil the reliability requirements placed on them. A usage modelling technique is presented, which can be used to formulate usage models for components. This technique will make it possible not only to certify the components, but also to certify the system containing the components. The usage model describes the usage from a structural point of view, which is complemented with a profile describing the expected usage in figures. The failure statistics from the usage test form the input of a hypothesis certification model, which makes it possible to certify a specific reliability level with a given degree of confidence. The certification model is the basis for deciding whether the component can be accepted, either for storage as a reusable component or for reuse. It is concluded that the proposed method makes it possible to certify software components, both when developing for and with reuse