On the Utility of Approximation Methods for Analyzing Software Error Detection Phenomenon

ABSTRACT Non‐homogeneous Poisson process (NHPP) based modeling has gained lot of importance in the field of Software Reliability Engineering. Many related models have been proposed in the literature and several are in the pipeline. Yamada's two stage fault removal modeling framework has been extensively worked in the past; wherein last decade has also seen the impact and importance of modeling related to imperfect debugging phenomenon. But, a major limitation of Yamada's two stage modeling framework has been its limitation to capture the time dependent nature of faults in the software. In the present proposition, an attempt has been made to reach to this requirement by making use of the approximation method as a solution methodology. The employment of this alternative solution methodology yields solutions to all the three possible situations; that is, pure error generation, exponential form and linear form of error generation. In order to facilitate the analysis, proposed cases have been verified on real life data sets and results obtained are quiet encouraging.