industrial strength

Hardware or software designed for fault tolerant operation. It mostly refers to software that has built-in safeguards against failure. For example, an industrial-strength operating system does not lock up the computer if an application fails. Industrial-strength features in a database (DBMS) ensure the quality of the data (see referential integrity and two-phase commit). Programs become industrial strength after being thoroughly tested in live user environments for extensive periods. See bulletproof.

Beyond the Software Itself

Being popular with IT people, the term has been expanded. In these book titles, industrial strength refers to tried and true methods. (Images courtesy of O'Reilly, www.oreilly.com)