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Time will tell: fault localization using time spectra

Published: 10 May 2008 Publication History

Abstract

We present an automatic fault localization technique which leverages time spectra as abstractions for program executions. Time spectra have been traditionally used for performance debugging. By contrast, we use them for functional correctness debugging by identifying pieces of program code that take a "suspicious" amount of time to execute. The approach can be summarized as follows: Time spectra are collected from passing and failing runs, observed behavior models are created using the time spectra collected from passing runs, and deviations from these models in failing runs are identified and scored as potential causes of failures. Our empirical evaluations conducted on three real-life projects suggest that the proposed approach can effectively reduce the space of potential root causes for failures, which can in turn improve the turn around time for fixes.

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cover image ACM Conferences
ICSE '08: Proceedings of the 30th international conference on Software engineering
May 2008
558 pages
ISBN:9781605580791
DOI:10.1145/1368088
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 10 May 2008

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Author Tags

  1. automated debugging
  2. fault localization

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ICSE '08 Paper Acceptance Rate 56 of 370 submissions, 15%;
Overall Acceptance Rate 276 of 1,856 submissions, 15%

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Cited By

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  • (2024)Traceback: A Fault Localization Technique for Molecular ProgramsProceedings of the 33rd ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis10.1145/3650212.3652138(415-427)Online publication date: 11-Sep-2024
  • (2024)A deep semantics-aware data augmentation method for fault localizationInformation and Software Technology10.1016/j.infsof.2024.107409168(107409)Online publication date: Apr-2024
  • (2023)A Case Against Coverage-Based Program Spectra2023 IEEE Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST)10.1109/ICST57152.2023.00011(13-24)Online publication date: Apr-2023
  • (2023)Mitigating the Effect of Class Imbalance in Fault Localization Using Context-aware Generative Adversarial Network2023 IEEE/ACM 31st International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC)10.1109/ICPC58990.2023.00045(304-315)Online publication date: May-2023
  • (2023)Software Fault Localization: an Overview of Research, Techniques, and ToolsHandbook of Software Fault Localization10.1002/9781119880929.ch1(1-117)Online publication date: 21-Apr-2023
  • (2022)Context-based cluster fault localizationProceedings of the 30th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Program Comprehension10.1145/3524610.3527891(482-493)Online publication date: 16-May-2022
  • (2022)BCL-FL: A Data Augmentation Approach with Between-Class Learning for Fault Localization2022 IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER)10.1109/SANER53432.2022.00045(289-300)Online publication date: Mar-2022
  • (2020)Online Prediction of Server Crash Based on Running Data2020 IEEE 20th International Conference on Software Quality, Reliability and Security Companion (QRS-C)10.1109/QRS-C51114.2020.00014(7-14)Online publication date: Dec-2020
  • (2020)Substate Profiling for Enhanced Fault Detection and Localization: An Empirical Study2020 IEEE 13th International Conference on Software Testing, Validation and Verification (ICST)10.1109/ICST46399.2020.00013(16-27)Online publication date: Oct-2020
  • (2019)Performance Monitor Counters: Interplay Between Safety and Security in Complex Cyber-Physical SystemsIEEE Transactions on Device and Materials Reliability10.1109/TDMR.2019.289888219:1(73-83)Online publication date: Mar-2019
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