The Software Failure Prediction Based on Fractal

Reliability is one of the most important qualities of software, and failure analysis is an important part of the research of software reliability. Fractals are mathematical or natural objects that are made of parts similar to the whole in certain ways. A fractal has a self-similar structure that occurs at different scales. In this paper the failure data of software are analyzed, the fractals are discovered in the data, and the method of software failure prediction based on fractals is proposed. Analyzing the empirical failure data (three data sets including two of Musa's) validates the validity of the model. It should be noticed that the analyses and research methods in this paper are differ from the conventional methods in the past, and a new idea for the research of the software failure mechanism is presented.