We present a comparison of correlated failures for multiversion software using community error recovery (CER) and software breeding (SB). In CER, errors are detected and recovered at checkpoints which are inserted in all the versions of the software. SB is analogous to the breeding of plants and animals. In SB, versions consist of loadable modules, and a driver exchanges the modules between versions to detect and eliminate faulty modules. We formulate reliability models to estimate the probability of failure for software using either CER or SB. Our reliability models assume failures in the checkpoints in CER and the driver in SB. We use beta-binomial distribution for modeling correlated failures of versions, because much of the evidence suggests that the assumption that failures in versions occur independently is not always true. Our comparison indicates that multiversion software using SB is more reliable than that using CER when the probability of failure in the checkpoints in CER or the driver in SB is 10-7.

The Web is a collection of multimedia documents in the form of HTML pages connected through hyperlinks. Unlike most search engines, which focus on information retrieval based on keywords, WebDB aims at supporting database-like comprehensive query functionalities as well navigation, and document generation functionalities with customizability. To support hypermedia database functionalities, we augment the traditional concepts of tables in relational databases and classes in object-oriented databases with notions of document formats and navigation. We design WQL (Web Query Language) as an HTML document manipulation language. WQL language statements contain two parts: SELECT. . . FROM. . . WHERE clauses for specifying retrieval of data contents from hypermedia databases and CREATE. . . AS. . . clauses for specifying the output HTML format and navigation of the query results. This paper presents the architecture of WebDB and its functionalities. The extension to SQL for hypermedia document manipulation, query, and navigation and implementation on NEC PERCIO OODBMS are described in detail.