Classification of Defects by Impact

To prioritize your review of Polyspace^® Bug Finder™ defects, you can use the Impact attribute assigned to the defect. The attribute allows you to filter results that require more immediate attention. For more information, see:

• Filter and Sort Results in Polyspace Platform User Interface

• Filter and Sort Results in Polyspace Access Web Interface (Polyspace Access)

• Filter and Sort Results in Polyspace Platform User Interface (Polyspace Code Prover)

The Impact attribute is assigned to a defect based on the following considerations:

• Criticality, or whether the defect is likely to cause a code failure.

  If a defect is likely to cause a code to fail, it is treated as a high impact defect. If the defect currently does not cause code failure but can cause problems with code maintenance in the future, it is a low impact defect.

• Certainty, or the rate of false positives.

For instance, the defect Integer division by zero is a high-impact defect because it is almost certain to cause a code crash. On the other hand, the defect Dead code has low impact because by itself, presence of dead code does not cause code failure. However, the dead code can hide other high-impact defects.

The impact of a defect is fixed and cannot be altered.