Dependability Assessment of Service-Oriented Architectures Using Fault Injection

Dependability assessment is an important aspect of any software system and shows the degree of trust and quality of service that is delivered by a system. Validation and verification techniques commonly employed to ensure that systems are fit for use attempt to remove all faults so that error conditions cannot occur but since it is not feasible to verify all states a system can achieve, it is not possible to completely test a system. Conversely, dependability assumes that failures may occur in a system and that mechanisms exist to mitigate any failures and thus provide a trustworthy system. This chapter discusses the different issues associated with dependability. The different techniques that can be used to assess dependability are discussed and are related to Service Orientated Architectures. A number of cases studies are used to show the practicality of the techniques used.