Leu, Shao-Wei.

We have developed reliability models for a variety of fault-tolerant software constructs including those based on two well-known methodologies: recovery block and N-version programming, and their variations. We also developed models for the conversation scheme which provides fault tolerance for concurrent software and a newly proposed system architecture, the recovery metaprogram, which attempts to unify most of the existing fault-tolerant strategies. Each model is evaluated using either GSPN, a software package based on Generalized Stochastic Petri Nets, or Sharpe, an evaluation tool for Markov models. The numerical results are then analyzed and compared. Major results derived from this process include the identification of critical parameters for each model, the comparisons of relative performance among different software constructs, the justification of a preliminary approach to the modeling of complex conversations, and the justification of recovery metaprogram regarding improvement of reliability.