Abstract: A product performance integrated database apparatus and method collects product performance data, determines the root cause of detected product failures and develops corrective action to correct the detected failures. The method determines an initial degree of risk of selected product failures by determining the severity of the effect of each failure and the frequency of occurrence of the effect of each failure. The severity of the effect and the frequency of occurrence are ranked with different ranking values. An initial risk assessment of each failure is the product of the ranked severity value and the selected ranked frequency of occurrence of the failure. Failures exceeding a threshold preliminary risk assessment are subject to the root cause or detected product failure analysis.

Abstract: A method for determining the reliability of software includes determining a total number of software input combinations, and then determining a matrix of test input combinations that is a subset of the total number. The software is tested for each test input combination, and the ratio of the number of successful tests to the number of test input combinations, coupled with an effectiveness ratio that is determined by the number of test input combinations divided by the total number of input combinations, represents the efficacy of the software testing. Future software errors are predicted based on the testing, and a decision whether to continue software modification and testing is made in response to the prediction of future software errors and the indicated efficacy of the software testing.