Track 1 Session 7
1:00 to 2:00 p.m. Thursday March 26, 2009

The Use of Event Logs for Software Reliability Analysis of Fielded Systems

Philips Healthcare produces high-end X-ray systems that are used to visualize arteries in the human body. Monitoring and constantly improving the reliability of these systems is of great importance to Philips Healthcare. In modern systems, the reliability is determined both by the hardware and software, and their complex interactions. In the past, much focus has been given on quantifying and understanding the hardware reliability of fielded systems, but not much was done to analyze the reliability of the software. However, due to modern Internet technologies, event logs generated by the systems software have become more easily available and can be used for reliability analysis. This presentation focuses on the use of event logs for software reliability analysis, the difficulties in doing so and some first encouraging results.

Key Words: Field Reliability, Software, Event Logs, Improvement Program, Data Analysis, PDP