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What Is Software Robustness And Why It Matters
Software robustness refers to the capacity of software systems to continue functioning correctly and reliably despite abnormal or unexpected input, including incorrect user input, network outages or hardware malfunction.
Robustness also encompasses deliberate attempts at disrupting systems.
A Robust Application Is One That Is Capable Of:
- Manage large data sets and complex operations without slowing or crashing.
- Maintaining integrity and consistency over time despite unexpected events, failures, or external stressors.
- Secure your network against threats and vulnerabilities such as malware, hacking or unauthorized access.
ISO 25010 E does not define robustness but rather reliability - defined as the degree to which products, systems or components fulfill specific tasks under specific conditions over a set period.
When we evaluate an application's robustness, we consider not only its resistance to failure but also how effectively it helps detect faults and recover from them.
An effective software system must contain features designed to detect and recover from failures quickly, along with redundant resources (backups) that can be utilized if anything should go amiss.
Planning architecture with sufficient resources available to address failures within each system component. Establishing strategies to monitor and oversee these resources.
Why Is Robust Software Important?
The benefits of Building Robust Software include:
- Application reliability and consistency increased
- Reduced maintenance and downtime costs
- Enhance user satisfaction and experience
- Cyber threats are now better protected, and enhanced security is available
- Software that increases trust and confidence
Imagine some of the consequences of software failure for healthcare, trading and transportation industries: an inadequate healthcare device may have disastrous repercussions for patients, an algorithm unable to respond quickly enough can result in financial losses, while an autonomous car not detecting pedestrians may lead to serious crashes - all scenarios where software robustness must ensure safety and reliability for an acceptable result.
Imagine an unreliable banking app that crashes upon improper account number entry by users - leading to financial losses for both the bank and the user.
A robust banking application, on the other hand, would detect and correct errors gracefully to minimize potential harm, thus protecting both parties involved from financial loss.
Robust software is essential for several reasons. First and foremost, it ensures that software applications continue running correctly even under harsh environmental conditions and unpredictable inputs or errors that would normally halt their functionality.
As such, robustness helps minimize downtime, improve reliability, and ultimately boost user satisfaction.
Software robustness offers multiple advantages that go far beyond mere benefits for an application or system, including reduced security risk.
Software that lacks robustness may be more susceptible to security attacks; by building robust applications, we can lower these risks significantly and enhance their protection.
Robust software can significantly lower maintenance and support costs associated with applications, as it makes identifying and fixing problems simpler - decreasing time and resource requirements to support an application.
How Can Software Robustness Be Achieved?
To achieve software robustness, various strategies and techniques must be used.
Design is key when developing robust software applications; planning how your program will handle errors, unexpected events, and potential points of failure must be planned when designing it.
To develop robust software applications, we employ several key approaches:
- Design For Fault Tolerance: Fault tolerance refers to software systems' capability of operating normally despite hardware or software failures, for instance, by employing redundant systems, implementing error-handling mechanisms and making sure applications can recover gracefully from failures so the whole system continues working even if certain components break.
- Modular design: By isolating various components of a program, modular programs can significantly increase software robustness by isolating components that contain errors that would otherwise impact other areas.
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Defensive Programming: Defensive programming is an approach to software development that anticipates and addresses potential errors or exceptions during all stages of creation, from input validation through error handling and exception handling - helping ensure software remains operable when encountering unexpected events or situations.
We include defensive programming techniques in our code so our applications continue to function seamlessly regardless of unexpected occurrences.
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Testing and Quality Assurance: Maintaining software systems must be robust.
Testing includes unit, integration and system tests as well as manual evaluation; automated tools are also valuable in helping identify software bugs or vulnerabilities that need further investigation.
- Proper Error Handling: Software should be designed to deal with errors gracefully, which means detecting them quickly and taking appropriate measures - including displaying error messages or logging errors for analysis later - before automatically recovering from them.
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Code Reviews: Code reviews are an activity of software quality assurance where someone or more than one individual other than its original author (usually a programmer or designer) checks its code to identify potential errors and vulnerabilities within it.
Code reviews help pinpoint areas for improvement by uncovering possible bugs within software code that would otherwise go undetected.
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Using established code practices: Established code practices provide guidelines describing the styles, methods and practices of programming in any particular programming language.
Coding standards arise when conventions designed to produce high-quality code have been adopted as conventions; coding standards help guarantee software is safe and reliable when written by programmers.
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Fault Detection: Faults must first be detected or predicted; one way of doing this is by using monitors as one way of doing this.
Monitors also help check other components, such as processors, processes and input/output in systems, for their health status.
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Continuous Monitoring and Improvement: Software should be constantly checked for errors or potential problems, and changes made as needed to keep its stability.
When necessary, improvements may also be implemented so as not to compromise its integrity and maintain the robust operation of the system.
- Prioritize security: An infrastructure vulnerable to cyber attacks or malicious actors cannot be considered secure, so to guard it, we use secure coding practices and implement security measures such as authentication, encryption and access control.
How To Prevent Errors
Imagine instead of your system trying to detect faults and then address them later; it is instead protected from their development.
While such feats of foresight seem impossible, many cases show how successful prevention strategies exist.
To eliminate latent faults from a system (for instance, memory leaks or soft errors that arise in unprotected caching systems), an element can be temporarily taken out of service before they accumulate and cause systemic failure - software rejuvenation may also be called for this purpose.
Producing software with high quality is one way to avoid faults. Code inspections, testing and coding standards can assist in this effort, along with pair programming, requirements reviews and code inspections that meet standards.
Pair programming can also prove valuable as part of this approach.
Five Common Methods To Develop Robust Software
1. Simple And Small Is The Way To Go
As developers start writing code for their first system, most try to gain an overall picture. Nobody knows exactly which obstacles await them when writing their first line of code; nevertheless, every developer must develop an initial development plan, though not necessarily with every decision already decided upon upfront.
Domain Driven Design, or event storming, was devised with simplicity in mind to facilitate fast feature implementations at the same time, minimizing errors that might arise during development.
While the speed of feature implementation remains important, you should also aim to ensure there are fewer errors present with each implementation of functionality that occurs over time.
2. Reduce Complexity
Writing new features requires being meticulous in both code and logic; otherwise, it becomes complicated very quickly.
Even when fully functional logic exists, error tracing may still prove challenging due to complexity issues.
Create as complex of a method as desired; however, its complexity shouldn't become necessary as new functionality requires changes that require modifications each time it needs to be integrated with it.
After all, this complexity encompasses not just a method but the entire architecture as well.
As developers, it can be easy to lose sight of our original goal when we begin creating logical solutions. Breaking functionality up into bite-sized chunks will help avoid future confusion among both team members and us individually.
Think of your software like an immense storage room: to quickly find what you're after, create labels for each box that make sense and label each as such - this way when searching, you know where exactly to begin searching!
Read More: Develop Robust Software Systems For Business Applications
3. Refactoring
Refactoring is one of the favorite activities of every developer (in my humble opinion!). Refactoring is essential in improving software quality and efficiency; its primary drawback lies with how large-scale changes may impact software.
However, we should keep this in mind while discussing refactoring as it's often misused to simplify code changes that make only minor adjustments.
Refactoring is an organized approach for improving code base design. At its heart lies small transformations that preserve behavior but may seem "too minor to warrant consideration," with cumulative effects that become visible quickly.
As soon as a developer begins improving code, its effects spread like a virus. Refactoring starts from one point and progresses until all business logic has been completely revised - not by replacing an existing system or adding features but through improvement.
This topic ties directly into the previous step: reduce complexity and keep things straightforward when refactoring existing code so as not to get disoriented and have greater control of individual components.
4. Unit Testing
Most developers write unit tests only to cover anticipated cases; what about unanticipated situations that arise without warning? Shouldn't we also consider these "what ifs" or wait for our QA folks to present unexpected outcomes from unrealistic scenarios within software?
Errors often occur when writing unit tests by basing them too closely on the logic implemented within the software, leading to incomplete coverage for certain input and output parameters that were expected.
You should approach every test as though its internal logic were unknown but its expected result familiar.
Modifying the logic of unit tests is not required to pass a test scenario; rather, each scenario should simulate input and output.
Should any change to code have an adverse impact on test results, two possibilities can arise: either success or failure of your scenario.
- Test case or scenario poorly designed
- Test too many functions at once
Tests help ensure that even when internal logic changes significantly, inputs and outputs should remain the same for input/output logic to work as intended if your change wasn't intended as a major software change.
It is vital that unit testing remains small.
Unit tests differ significantly from functional or integration testing, yet both may become confused easily.
5. Second Pair Of Eyes
Developers understand we don't possess all of the answers when it comes to software issues; therefore, they develop multiple solutions for problems they come across.
Developers don't just come up with answers when faced with challenges - initial concepts of features or problems often present, followed by various ideas before and during implementation that come about through sharing ideas among peers or getting an outside perspective on problems they solve themselves.
Sharing your thoughts prior to or during implementation may have positive results - you could help refine and polish ideas while getting outside perspective as a bonus!
Building Robust Systems Is Important In It.
This article details why robust systems are necessary, as well as what to do in case of an incident.
Building Robust Systems
Even when problems can be easily addressed using money or the assistance of highly skilled professionals, such solutions don't always represent cost-effective or safe solutions.
Maintaining an extensive manual task system can be dauntingly complex. More prone to breakdown and accident than simpler systems, it cannot sustain long term as teams become stressed out and bored of its complexity.
Achieve success by fixing small errors along the way while continuing with your system maintenance plans.
Shift Left Strategy
Starting a project via a technical kickoff can often be the easiest and simplest approach, providing time for reflection on your project as you outline its scope, plan its software architecture and components and identify any gaps between components that need filling or new requirements that arise later in development.
From there, you can advance to microservices or event bus architecture with carefully considered API design for more granular control over API design decisions.
Shift right strategy refers to an SRE's (Site Reliability Engineer) support starting during design instead of after user traffic peaks, from design through implementation.
Care should be taken when allocating resources or people, whether computers or Software Engineering time. An SRE's day typically revolves around this essential cross-functional activity.
When faced with systems that have already been established (e.g., if users can browse your website), redesigning bad parts and rewriting them completely from scratch might be your only viable option for remedy.
These individuals qualify as SREs because their skills specialize in programming; their high level of expertise sets them apart.
Understanding an operating system, network protocols, release pipelines and software quality control is essential in today's fast-moving digital business world.
Moving between alarm and telemetry systems should also be done confidently with no fear. In addition, transversal knowledge must also exist to define SLOs (Service Level Goals), manage complexity effectively and deal with emergencies, as well as write software that governs or simplifies other software systems.
Interaction Of Sre With Other Team Members
Reorganization between SRE, Development Team and other members does not merely involve switching roles; rather, it represents an entirely different way to think about product governance - when one considers that operations responsibilities must be reduced as much as possible, an ideal balance can be reached across teams.
Create continuous systems that facilitate safe, seamless changes to large system architectures like clusters or applications.
Users can access this system from anywhere - an office with four screens and a workstation, an airport waiting hall or while sitting in transit - meaning an immense system can be managed efficiently by small groups of people. We must continue asking ourselves whether SRE investment time and energy are worth their while as this activity remains strategic.
An alternative method of developing stable systems involves working collaboratively to establish standard distributed platforms that are easier to maintain while permitting professionals to switch teams within an organization easily.
Take an airline, for instance: aircraft configurations tend to be similar so that ground staff members can receive training on just a handful of precise machines. Standard systems and landscapes of finished products that must be maintained also contribute towards creating standards, providing easy transition among teams within that same organization.
This strategy does not aim directly to impact users; rather, its goal is to simplify systems and enhance them. A good SRE must first and foremost be an excellent software engineer: one who excels at solving complex, heterogeneous issues while being familiar with low-level functions of computers and operating systems, as well as automatisms that facilitate interactions among developers.
SREs serve as the link between technical teams and production systems, helping developers understand the complexity that may otherwise escape them due to being specialists in other fields.
While speed must always be balanced against knowledge-sharing needs, when something works, it becomes imperative not just to stop after the first implementation but instead continue searching out more user-friendly technical solutions.
Development teams do not need to understand every detail of cloud services on an everyday basis. Still, when necessary, they must possess all the necessary tools.
As IT is constantly shifting, teams and people inevitably come and go; to stay productive, you require long onboarding processes with shadowing/pair programming practices before someone becomes productive in your group.
Not just SREs are accountable for product delivery. Development teams also deserve their fair share of responsibility in this respect.
They must join on-call rotations so they can use and experience their product firsthand. No one likes being forced out of a cinema screening to connect a laptop to a network in order to run systems properly!
To be prepared, you must possess product diagnostic tools and graphs for examination, but more than anything, practice is key when using random failure simulations in order to experiment.
When planning experiments utilizing Chaos Engineering principles. In preparation, use product diagnostic tools, graphs and simulations, but more than anything, practice with simulations of random failures to experiment systematically and test theories through random failures simulations as much as possible (known as Chaos Engineering).
Incidents
A Network Operating Core, commonly referred to as NOC for short, is the group of personnel in an organization responsible for constantly monitoring a company's global network and also serving as SRE resources when an incident arises.
Not limited to monitoring graphs alone, NOC personnel also play important roles such as providing video conference support, tracking events and uptime, automating alerting procedures and initiating diagnoses using chatbots/machine learning technology as required - chatbots could even aid their work here!
There are two main objectives when an accident occurs:
- As soon as you can, minimize the impact
- Stop it from happening again
The classic flow of incident handling involves:
- Troubleshooting: Managing the situation and mitigating it
- Find the root cause of your problem (triage).
- Managing an impact removal phase
- Postmortem procedures: how to deal with them
- Checking the consolidation of the system and its evolution (long-term fix).
Postmortem
Postmortem reports are an integral component of safety risk evaluation (SRE), providing critical analysis after accidents or incidents have taken place or when something has gone awry.
Transparency and honesty must be the hallmarks of this process; otherwise, it will fail miserably. This should not be seen as an accusatory process but more as reconstructing what transpired throughout history, such as crucial moments, causes, effects and data losses, as well as restoration works - plus instances when we got lucky!
Establishing the source and offering effective solutions are two components essential to an effective SRE culture.
A postmortem typically results in a list of bugs to fix. Communicating what transpired helps shape SRE cultures as a result.
To strike an effective balance between work and rest, it is vitally important to reduce workload sustainably. Not only should balance be prioritized, safety, efficiency and team responsibility should all come into consideration as tired individuals find it harder to focus or concentrate, leading to costly errors being committed due to fatigue.
Pilots, doctors and drivers all take human factors seriously when considering optimal performance of their professions.
Postmortems are indispensable when it comes to improving any process, whether through retrospectives, long-term corrective thinking or both.
Without post mortems in place, you won't learn from mistakes but instead repeat them over and over.
Conclusion
Software robustness is an essential quality attribute of any software system. Robustness guarantees that software continues to operate correctly and reliably even in response to unanticipated input or situations, guaranteeing its continued smooth functioning and integrity.
Software systems combine techniques like fault detection, modular programming, defensive design testing monitoring and quality assurance into reliable software systems that operate seamlessly for their users while minimizing downtime or system failures, creating seamless experiences while cutting costs associated with system downtime and system failures.
We aim for 100% reliability for every software system.
