Run-Time Monitoring of Timing Constraints: A Survey of Methods and Tools

Abstract-Despite the availability of static analysis methods to achieve a correct-by-construction design for different systems in terms of timing behavior, violations of timing constraints can still occur at run-time due to different reasons. The aim of monitoring of system performance with respect to the timing constraints is to detect the violations of timing specifications, or to predict them based on the current system performance data. Considerable work has been dedicated to suggesting efficient performance monitoring approaches during the past years. This paper presents a survey and classification of those approaches in order to help researchers gain a better view over different methods and developments in monitoring of timing behavior of systems. Classifications of the mentioned approaches are given based on different items that are seen as important in developing a monitoring system, i.e., the use of additional hardware, the data collection approach, etc. Moreover, a description of how these different methods work is presented in this paper along with the advantages and downsides of each of them

EXaM: un tool per l'esecuzione e il monitoring di applicazioni a componenti distribuiti

La tesi presenta lo studio e lo sviluppo di un tool per la configurazione di un ambiente di monitoring distribuito per applicazioni sviluppate secondo il paradigma "component-based". Conseguentemente viene illustrata una tecnica per il recupero di informazioni rilevanti a livello architetturale, ossia tracce di esecuzione derivanti dall'osservazione delle interazioni tra i componenti a runtime

Détection d'erreur au plus tôt dans les systèmes temps-réel : une approche basée sur la vérification en ligne

La vérification en ligne de spécifications formelles permet de créer des détecteurs d'erreur dont le pouvoir de détection dépend en grande partie du formalisme vérifié à l'exécution. Plus le formalisme est puissant plus la séparation entre les exécutions correctes et erronées peut être précise. Cependant, l'utilisation des vérifieurs en-ligne dans le but de détecter des erreurs est entravée par deux problèmes récurrents : le coût à l'exécution de ces vérifications, et le flou entourant les propriétés sémantiques exactes des signaux d'erreur ainsi générés. L'objectif de cette thèse est de clarifier les conditions d'utilisation de tels détecteurs dans le cadre d'applications « temps réel » critiques. Dans ce but, nous avons donné l'interprétation formelle de la notion d'erreur comportementale « temps réel». Nous définissions la propriété de détection « au plus tôt » qui permet de d'identifier la classe des détecteurs qui optimisent la latence de détection. Pour illustrer cette classe de détecteurs, nous proposons un prototype qui vérifie un comportement décrit par un automate temporisé. La propriété de détection au plus tôt est atteinte en raisonnant sur l'abstraction temporelle de l'automate et non sur l'automate lui-même. Nos contributions se déclinent dans trois domaines, la formalisation de la détection au plus tôt, sa traduction pour la synthèse de détecteurs d'erreur à partir d'automate temporisés, puis le déploiement concret de ces détecteurs sur une plate-forme de développement temps réel, Xenomai. ABSTRACT : Runtime verification of formal specifications provides the means to generate error detectors with detection capabilities depending mostly on the kind of formalism considered. The stronger the formalism is the easier the speration between correct and erroneous execution is. Nevertheless, two recurring issues have to be considered before using such error detection mechanisms. First, the cost, at run-time, of such error detector has to be assessed. Then, we have to ensure that the execution of such detectors has a well defined semantics. This thesis aims at better understanding the conditions of use of such detectors within critical real-time software application. Given formal behavioural specification, we defined the notion of "behavioural error". Then, we identify the class of early detectors that optimize the detection latency between the occurence of such errors and their signalling. The whole generation process has been implemented for specifications provided as timed automata. The prototype achieves early error detection thanks to a preprocessing of the automaton to generate its temporal abstraction. Our contributions are threefold : formalisation of early detection, algorithms for timed automata run-time verification, and prototyping of such detectors on a real-time kernel, Xenomai

The Alamo Execution Monitor Architecture

Future programming environments will incorporate a tighter coupling between language runtime systems and the monitoring tools that are used to debug, tune, visualize, and understand them. Many innovations that are developed first in higher level programming language environments will migrate into mainstream languages once their properties are understood and generalized. The Alamo execution monitor architecture was developed to facilitate rapid development of execution monitors, especially visualization tools that are instrumental in understanding complex runtime system interactions in higher level languages. Alamo simplifies the development of such tools by solving the low-level access, control, and intrusion problems inherent in monitoring. Alamo was implemented first for the very high-level imperative goal-directed language Icon. The architecture was then implemented for ANSI C in order to broaden the impact of the work. This paper describes the ANSI C implementation of Alamo and the monitoring services it provides