Once a fault is activated an error is created. An error may act in the same way as a fault in that it can create further error conditions, therefore an error may propagate multiple times within a system boundary without causing an observable failure. If an error propagates outside the system boundary a failure is said to occur. A failure is basically the point at which it can be said that a service is failing to meet its specification. Since the output data from one service may be fed into another, a failure in one service may propagate into another service as a fault so a chain can be formed of the form: Fault leading to Error leading to Failure leading to Error, etc.