245 research outputs found
The Java system dependence graph
The Program Dependence Graph was introduced by Ottenstein and Ottenstein in 1984 [14]. It was suggested to be a suitable internal program representation for monolithic programs, for the purpose of carrying out certain software engineering operations such as slicing and the computation of program metrics. Since then, Horwitz et al. have introduced the multi-procedural equivalent System Dependence Graph [9]. Many authors have proposed object-oriented dependence graph construction approaches [11, 10, 20, 12]. Every approach provides its own benefits, some of which are language specific. This paper is based on Java and combines the most important benefits from a range of approaches. The result is a Java System Dependence Graph, which summarises the key benefits offered by different approaches and adapts them (if necessary) to the Java language
Understanding object-oriented source code from the behavioural perspective
Comprehension is a key activity that underpins a variety of software maintenance and engineering tasks. The task of understanding object-oriented systems is hampered by the fact that the code segments that are related to a user-level function tend to be distributed across the system. We introduce a tool-supported code extraction technique that addresses this issue. Given a minimal amount of information about a behavioural element of the system that is of interest (such as a use-case), it extracts a trail of the methods (and method invocations) through the system that are needed in order to achieve an understanding of the implementation of the element of interest. We demonstrate the feasibility of our approach by implementing it as part of a code extraction tool, presenting a case study and evaluating the approach and tool against a set of established criteria for program comprehension tools
Data and analysis code for GP EFSM inference
This artifact captures the workflow that we adopted for our experimental evaluation in our ICSME paper on inferring state transition functions during EFSM inference. To summarise, the paper uses Genetic Programming to infer data transformations, to enable the inference of fully 'computational' extended finite state machine models. This submission shows how we generated, transformed, analysed, and visualised our raw data. It includes everything needed to generate raw results and provides the relevant R code in the form of a re-usable Jupyter Notebook (accompanied by a descriptive narrative)
Inferring Computational State Machine Models from Program Executions
The challenge of inferring state machines from log data or execution traces is well-established, and has led to the development of several powerful techniques. Current approaches tend to focus on the inference of conventional finite state machines or, in few cases, state machines with guards. However, these machines are ultimately only partial, because they fail to model how any underlying variables are computed during the course of an execution, they are not computational. In this paper we introduce a technique based upon Genetic Programming to infer these data transformation functions, which in turn render inferred automata fully computational. Instead of merely determining whether or not a sequence is possible, they can be simulated, and be used to compute the variable values throughout the course of an execution. We demonstrate the approach by using a Cross-Validation study to reverse-engineer complete (computational) EFSMs from traces of established implementations
Uncertainty-Driven Black-Box Test Data Generation
We can never be certain that a software system is correct simply by testing it, but with every additional successful test we become less uncertain about its correctness. In absence of source code or elaborate specifications and models, tests are usually generated or chosen randomly. However, rather than randomly choosing tests, it would be preferable to choose those tests that decrease our uncertainty about correctness the most. In order to guide test generation, we apply what is referred to in Machine Learning as "Query Strategy Framework": We infer a behavioural model of the system under test and select those tests which the inferred model is "least certain" about. Running these tests on the system under test thus directly targets those parts about which tests so far have failed to inform the model. We provide an implementation that uses a genetic programming engine for model inference in order to enable an uncertainty sampling technique known as "query by committee", and evaluate it on eight subject systems from the Apache Commons Math framework and JodaTime. The results indicate that test generation using uncertainty sampling outperforms conventional and Adaptive Random Testing
SEPIA: Search for Proofs Using Inferred Automata
This paper describes SEPIA, a tool for automated proof generation in Coq.
SEPIA combines model inference with interactive theorem proving. Existing proof
corpora are modelled using state-based models inferred from tactic sequences.
These can then be traversed automatically to identify proofs. The SEPIA system
is described and its performance evaluated on three Coq datasets. Our results
show that SEPIA provides a useful complement to existing automated tactics in
Coq.Comment: To appear at 25th International Conference on Automated Deductio
Effectively incorporating expert knowledge in automated software remodularisation
Remodularising the components of a software system is challenging: sound design principles (e.g., coupling and cohesion) need to be balanced against developer intuition of which entities conceptually belong together. Despite this, automated approaches to remodularisation tend to ignore domain knowledge, leading to results that can be nonsensical to developers. Nevertheless, suppling such knowledge is a potentially burdensome task to perform manually. A lot information may need to be specified, particularly for large systems. Addressing these concerns, we propose the SUMO (SUpervised reMOdularisation) approach. SUMO is a technique that aims to leverage a small subset of domain knowledge about a system to produce a remodularisation that will be acceptable to a developer. With SUMO, developers refine a modularisation by iteratively supplying corrections. These corrections constrain the type of remodularisation eventually required, enabling SUMO to dramatically reduce the solution space. This in turn reduces the amount of feedback the developer needs to supply. We perform a comprehensive systematic evaluation using 100 real world subject systems. Our results show that SUMO guarantees convergence on a target remodularisation with a tractable amount of user interaction
Mining State-Based Models from Proof Corpora
Interactive theorem provers have been used extensively to reason about
various software/hardware systems and mathematical theorems. The key challenge
when using an interactive prover is finding a suitable sequence of proof steps
that will lead to a successful proof requires a significant amount of human
intervention. This paper presents an automated technique that takes as input
examples of successful proofs and infers an Extended Finite State Machine as
output. This can in turn be used to generate proofs of new conjectures. Our
preliminary experiments show that the inferred models are generally accurate
(contain few false-positive sequences) and that representing existing proofs in
such a way can be very useful when guiding new ones.Comment: To Appear at Conferences on Intelligent Computer Mathematics 201
Property-Based Testing - The ProTest Project
The ProTest project is an FP7 STREP on property based testing. The purpose of the project is to develop software engineering approaches to improve reliability of service-oriented networks; support fault-finding and diagnosis based on specified properties of the system. And to do so we will build automated tools that will generate and run tests, monitor execution at run-time, and log events for analysis.
The Erlang / Open Telecom Platform has been chosen as our initial implementation vehicle due to its robustness and reliability within the telecoms sector. It is noted for its success in the ATM telecoms switches by Ericsson, one of the project partners, as well as for multiple other uses such as in facebook, yahoo etc. In this paper we provide an overview of the project goals, as well as detailing initial progress in developing property based testing techniques and tools for the concurrent functional programming language Erlang
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