Mining Traces of Embedded Software Systems for Insights

Embedded safety-critical systems are essential for today's society as we rely on them in all aspects of our life. Should safety-critical systems fail to meet their specified function, then they have the potential to cause harm to people, cause loss of capital infrastructure, or cause significant damage to the environment. Safety-critical systems are becoming increasingly complex; the more complex, the higher the risk of safety hazards for the public. With the increase of automation in driving and other areas, the complexity and criticality of the software will continue to increase drastically. Computer assistance will become essential for humans to get a deep understanding of programs underlying modern systems. Mining specifications and properties from program traces is a promising approach to help humans understand modern complex programs. Understanding temporal dependencies in relation to performance is one aspect of such an endeavour. A specification mined from a system trace can allow the developer to understand, among others, task dependencies, activation patterns, and response triggers. The artefacts produced by mining are useful for system designers, developers, safety managers, and can even provide input for other tools. This talk introduces the concepts behind mining traces of embedded software programs and discusses the challenges of building practical tools.