Abstract
Testing of concurrent software is difficult due to the non-determinism present in scheduling of concurrent threads. Existing testing approaches tackle this problem either using a modified scheduler which allows to systematically explore possible scheduling alternatives or using random or heuristic noise injection which allows to observe different scheduling scenarios. In this paper, we experimentally compare several existing noise injection heuristics both from the point of view of coverage of possible behaviours as well as from the point of view of error discovery probability. Moreover, we also propose a new noise injection heuristics which uses concurrency coverage information to decide where to put noise and show that it can outperform the existing approaches in certain cases.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Ben-Asher, Y., Farchi, E., Eytani, Y.: Heuristics for Finding Concurrent Bugs. In: Proc. of IPDPS 2003. IEEE CS (2003)
Bron, A., Farchi, E., Magid, Y., Nir, Y., Ur, S.: Applications of Synchronization Coverage. In: Proc. of PPoPP 2005. ACM (2005)
Edelstein, O., Farchi, E., Nir, Y., Ratsaby, G., Ur, S.: Multithreaded Java Program Test Generation. IBM Systems Journal 41, 111–125 (2002)
Eytani, Y.: Concurrent Java Test Generation as a Search Problem. ENTCS 144 (2006)
Eytani, Y., Latvala, T.: Explaining Intermittent Concurrent Bugs by Minimizing Scheduling Noise. In: Bin, E., Ziv, A., Ur, S. (eds.) HVC 2006. LNCS, vol. 4383, pp. 183–197. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)
Farchi, E., Nir, Y., Ur, S.: Concurrent Bug Patterns and How To Test Them. In: Proc. of IPDPS 2003. IEEE CS (2003)
Křena, B., Letko, Z., Vojnar, T.: Coverage Metrics for Saturation-based and Search-based Testing of Concurrent Software. To appear in Proc. of RV (2011), http://www.fit.vutbr.cz/~iletko/pub/rv11paper.pdf
Křena, B., Letko, Z., Vojnar, T., Ur, S.: A Platform for Search-based Testing of Concurrent Software. In: Proc. of PADTAD 2010. ACM (2010)
Nir-Buchbinder, Y., Farchi, E., Tzoref-Brill, R., Ur, S.: IBM Contest Documentation (May 2005), http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/contest
Soriano, J., Jimenez, M., Cantera, J.M., Hierro, J.J.: Delivering Mobile Enterprise Services on Morfeo’s MC Open Source Platform. In: Proc. of MDM 2006. IEEE CS (2006)
Stoller, S.D.: Testing Concurrent Java Programs Using Randomized Scheduling. In: Proc. of RV 2002. ENTCS, vol. 70(4). Elsevier (2002)
Šimša, J., Bryant, R., Gibson, G.: DBug: Systematic Testing of Unmodified Distributed and Multi-threaded Systems. In: Groce, A., Musuvathi, M. (eds.) SPIN Workshops 2011. LNCS, vol. 6823, pp. 188–193. Springer, Heidelberg (2011)
Trainin, E., Nir-Buchbinder, Y., Tzoref-Brill, R., Zlotnick, A., Ur, S., Farchi, E.: Forcing Small Models of Conditions on Program Interleaving for Detection of Concurrent Bugs. In: Proc. of PADTAD 2009. ACM (2009)
Yang, C.-S.D., Souter, A.L., Pollock, L.L.: All-DU-Path Coverage for Parallel Programs. In: Proc. of ISSTA 1998. ACM (1998)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Křena, B., Letko, Z., Vojnar, T. (2012). Noise Injection Heuristics for Concurrency Testing. In: Kotásek, Z., Bouda, J., Černá, I., Sekanina, L., Vojnar, T., Antoš, D. (eds) Mathematical and Engineering Methods in Computer Science. MEMICS 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7119. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-25929-6_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-25929-6_12
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-25928-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-25929-6
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)