Patent ID: 7047523

Claim:
A method for using a computer to ascertain an overall fault description for at least one section of a computer program, comprising: storing fault descriptions associated with reference elements to describe possible faults in the reference elements, respectively; storing a section of the computer program; ascertaining a control flow description for the section of the computer program, to describe a flow of control information in the section of the computer program; ascertaining a data flow description for the section of the computer program, to describe a flow of data in the section of the computer program; combining the control and data flow descriptions into a joint flow description for the section of the computer program; selecting program elements from the section of the computer program; matching each selected program element with a corresponding reference element to obtain a fault description associated with the corresponding reference element and thereby describe possible faults in the selected program element; ascertaining the overall fault description as an overall fault tree using the fault descriptions of the program elements from the computer program, with a structure of the overall fault description taking into account a structure of the joint flow description; and altering the overall fault tree in terms of prescribable boundary conditions.