Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Texas at Dallas, 2007. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 197-208)

As users continually request additional functionality, software systems will continue to grow in their complexity, as well as in their susceptibility to failures. Particularly for sensitive systems requiring higher levels of reliability, faulty system modules may increase development and maintenance cost. Hence, identifying them early would support the development of reliable systems through improved scheduling and quality control. Research effort to predict software modules likely to contain faults, as a consequence, has been substantial. Although a wide range of fault prediction models have been proposed, we remain far from having reliable tools that can be widely applied to real industrial systems. For projects with known fault histories, numerous research studies show that statistical models can provide reasonable estimates at predicting faulty modules using software metrics. However, as context-specific metrics differ from project to project, the task of predicting across projects is difficult to achieve. Prediction models obtained from one project experience are ineffective in their ability to predict fault-prone modules when applied to other projects. Hence, taking full benefit of the existing work in software development community has been substantially limited. As a step towards solving this problem, in this dissertation we propose a fault prediction approach that exploits existing prediction models, adapting them to improve their ability to predict faulty system modules across different software projects.

In his paper B.K.Harrison concludes with the observation that his "solutions ... are presented as raw material for further research in General Relativity". In the same spirit, the present work started out as an attempt to process that raw material in a production-line powered by a computer. Harrison's solutions uould be fed in at one end, and the finished product, as yet undecided, would appear at the other. In the event, however, the project became more like an exercise in quality control, to continue the analogy. A search was made for algebraic criteria which would distinguish between those solutions which were acceptable for further analysis with particular regard to Gravitational radiation, and those which were not. Regrettably, no criteria could be found which characterised radiative solutions unequivocally, and, at the same time, lent themselves to a computer approach. The result is that the discussion of radiative solutions has had to be relegated to an appendix (Appendix 1), while the main body of the work is concerned with the determination of those quantities (the Newman-Penrose scalars) which would seem to be the foundation of any future computer-based analysis of gravitational radiation. Chapter 1 is an account of the underlying mathematical formulation, defining the terms, concepts and processes involved. In Chapter 2 the transformation of some of the ideas of Chapter 1 into computer software is presented. Chapter 3 is concerned with the specific metrics (the Harrison metrics) and the extent to which they have heen processed. The project has leaned heavily on papers by Harrison for the "raw material", by D' Inverno and Russell Clark, who pioneered the techniques and classified the Harrison metrics, and by Sachs for the treatment of gravitational radiation. However, the analysis of diagonal metrics, the special tetrad of Chapter 2 and the results in Appendix 2 are new.

Software engineers currently rely on lengthy source code reviews, testing, and static analysis tools to attempt identification of software vulnerabilities. While these are sometimes effective, the methods used are limited and don't catch all security vulnerabilities.Work has been done in identifying areas of software prone to failure through a design metrics approach, and with success. This study aims to extend this idea to software security. The premise of this thesis is that the set of security vulnerabilities overlaps (or may be a subset of) the overall set of software bugs and failures. It is postulated that a good, reliable design should also be a secure design. This thesis identifies design issues which may lead to security vulnerabilities and proposes possible design metric enhancements to capture these design properties. / Department of Computer Science

Thesis (M.S.)--West Virginia University, 2007. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains vi, 59 p. : ill. (some col.). Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 57-59).

Thesis (M. Eng.)--Carleton University, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 93-97). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Alabama at Birmingham, 2007. / Additional advisors: Gary J. Grimes, Chittoor V. Ramamoorthy, Murat N. Tanju, Gregg L. Vaughn, B. Earl Wells. Description based on contents viewed Feb. 12, 2009; title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 150-158).

Thesis (Ph. D. in Software Engineering )--Naval Postgraduate School, March 2005. / Thesis Advisor(s): Bret Michael. Includes bibliographical references (p. 389-412) Also available online.

Thesis (M.S.)--West Virginia University, 2004. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 106 p. : ill. (some col.). Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 105-106).

Thesis (M.S.)--Mississippi State University. Department of Computer Science and Engineering. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.