Article

A survey of trace exploration tools and techniques

Authors:

Abdelwahab Hamou-Lhadj,

Timothy C. LethbridgeAuthors Info & Claims

CASCON '04: Proceedings of the 2004 conference of the Centre for Advanced Studies on Collaborative research

Pages 42 - 55

Published: 04 October 2004 Publication History

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Abstract

The analysis of large execution traces is almost impossible without efficient tool support. Lately, there has been an increase in the number of tools for analyzing traces generated from object-oriented systems. This interest has been driven by the fact that polymorphism and dynamic binding pose serious limitations to static analysis. However, most of the techniques supported by existing tools are found in the context of very specific visualization schemes, which makes them hard to reuse. It is also very common to have two different tools implement the same techniques using different terminology. This appears to result from the absence of a common framework for trace analysis approaches. This paper presents the state of the art in the area of trace analysis. We do this by analyzing the techniques that are supported by eight trace exploration tools. We also discuss their advantages and limitations and how they can be improved.

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Mertz JNunes ILitoiu MClarke STei K(2019)On the practical feasibility of software monitoringProceedings of the 14th International Symposium on Software Engineering for Adaptive and Self-Managing Systems10.1109/SEAMS.2019.00030(169-180)Online publication date: 25-May-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/SEAMS.2019.00030
Suthaharan SWong KShen CBrown D(2018)A software engineering schema for data intensive applicationsProceedings of the 2018 ACM Southeast Conference10.1145/3190645.3190675(1-8)Online publication date: 29-Mar-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3190645.3190675
Alimadadi SMesbah APattabiraman KChaudron MCrnkovic IChechik MHarman M(2018)Inferring hierarchical motifs from execution tracesProceedings of the 40th International Conference on Software Engineering10.1145/3180155.3180216(776-787)Online publication date: 27-May-2018
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Index Terms

A survey of trace exploration tools and techniques
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Software post-development issues
      1. Software reverse engineering
    2. Software verification and validation
      1. Process validation
        Traceability
      2. Software defect analysis
        Software testing and debugging

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Reviews

Reviewer: Niteen S. Yemul

Eight trace exploration tools and their associated techniques are discussed in this paper. It could be a good starting point for support executives grappling with analyses of large execution traces. Each tool and its techniques are described, followed by a discussion that summarizes associated concepts, including their advantages and disadvantages, and ways to improve them. Shimba is a reverse engineering environment for Java programs. It attempts to extract behavioral patterns, and represents output as scenario diagrams. ISVis is a visualization tool that uses recurring patterns, and represents them as an information mural and temporal message flow diagram, similar to unified modeling language (UML) sequence diagrams. Ovation, another tool, represents a trace as a tree-like structure. Jinsight is a Java visualization tool that represents traces in forms, such as histogram view and reference pattern view. Program explorer is a C++ exploration tool that represents a trace as an interaction graph. Architectural visualization of dynamics in Java programs is a tool that allows control of a sequence of events of the user's choice. The scenario management tool produces scenario diagrams from a dynamic event trace. The collaboration browser recovers object collaborations from execution traces. The above tools are discussed, focusing on aspects like modeling, abstraction, and size reduction of traces. ISVis applies modeling techniques to generate directed acyclic graphs, whereas Tree Explorer represents traces as graphs. Different levels of abstraction, such as object, class, and architecture, are considered. The size explosion problem considers using data collection techniques, pattern matching, sampling, and hiding components to reduce the size of trace. This survey does not cover tools that deal with distributed systems. Online Computing Reviews Service

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Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

CASCON '04: Proceedings of the 2004 conference of the Centre for Advanced Studies on Collaborative research

October 2004

317 pages

Conference Chairs:
Martin Wildberger
Director of IBM Toronto Software Development Lab
,
Michael Halasz
National Research Council Canada
,
Editors:
Hanan Lutfiyya
The University of Western Ontario
,
Janice Singer
National Research Council Canada
,
Darlene A. Stewart
National Research Council Canada
,
Program Chairs:
Hanan L. Lufiyya
University of Western Ontario
,
Janice Singer
National Research Council Canada

Publisher

IBM Press

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Published: 04 October 2004

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Overall Acceptance Rate 24 of 90 submissions, 27%

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View all

Mertz JNunes ILitoiu MClarke STei K(2019)On the practical feasibility of software monitoringProceedings of the 14th International Symposium on Software Engineering for Adaptive and Self-Managing Systems10.1109/SEAMS.2019.00030(169-180)Online publication date: 25-May-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/SEAMS.2019.00030
Suthaharan SWong KShen CBrown D(2018)A software engineering schema for data intensive applicationsProceedings of the 2018 ACM Southeast Conference10.1145/3190645.3190675(1-8)Online publication date: 29-Mar-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3190645.3190675
Alimadadi SMesbah APattabiraman KChaudron MCrnkovic IChechik MHarman M(2018)Inferring hierarchical motifs from execution tracesProceedings of the 40th International Conference on Software Engineering10.1145/3180155.3180216(776-787)Online publication date: 27-May-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3180155.3180216
Mattila AIhantola PKilamo TLuoto ANurminen MVäätäjä H(2016)Software visualization todayProceedings of the 20th International Academic Mindtrek Conference10.1145/2994310.2994327(262-271)Online publication date: 17-Oct-2016
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Niculescu MDugerdil PCanedo BPadmanabhuni SNambiar RDevanbu PRamanathan MSureka A(2015)Measuring Inheritance Patterns in Object Oriented SystemsProceedings of the 8th India Software Engineering Conference10.1145/2723742.2723755(130-138)Online publication date: 18-Feb-2015
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Kamdem Kengne CFopa LTermier AIbrahim NRousset MWashio TSantana MGrossman RUthurusamy RDhillon IKoren Y(2013)Efficiently rewriting large multimedia application execution traces with few event sequencesProceedings of the 19th ACM SIGKDD international conference on Knowledge discovery and data mining10.1145/2487575.2488211(1348-1356)Online publication date: 11-Aug-2013
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Callo Arias TAmerica PAvgeriou P(2013)A top-down approach to construct execution views of a large software-intensive systemJournal of Software: Evolution and Process10.1002/smr.57725:3(233-260)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2013
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Palviainen MEvesti AOvaska E(2011)The reliability estimation, prediction and measuring of component-based softwareJournal of Systems and Software10.1016/j.jss.2011.01.04884:6(1054-1070)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2011
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Al Haider NGaudin BMurphy J(2011)Execution trace exploration and analysis using ontologiesProceedings of the Second international conference on Runtime verification10.1007/978-3-642-29860-8_33(412-426)Online publication date: 27-Sep-2011
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Denker MRessia JGreevy ONierstrasz O(2010)Modeling features at runtimeProceedings of the 13th international conference on Model driven engineering languages and systems: Part II10.5555/1929101.1929117(138-152)Online publication date: 3-Oct-2010
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