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Refining spectrum-based fault localization rankings

Published: 08 March 2009 Publication History

Abstract

Spectrum-based fault localization is a statistical technique that aims at helping software developers to find faults quickly by analyzing abstractions of program traces to create a ranking of most probable faulty components (e.g., program statements). Although spectrum-based fault localization has been shown to be effective, its diagnostic accuracy is inherently limited, since the semantics of components are not considered. In particular, components that exhibit identical execution patterns cannot be distinguished. To enhance its diagnostic quality, in this paper, we combine spectrum-based fault localization with a model-based debugging approach based on abstract interpretation within a framework coined Deputo. The model-based approach is used to refine the ranking obtained from the spectrum-based method by filtering out those components that do not explain the observed failures when the program's semantics is considered. We show that this combined approach outperforms the individual approaches and other state-of-the-art automated debugging techniques.

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  • (2024)SFLVis: visual analysis of software fault localizationJournal of Visualization10.1007/s12650-024-00979-x27:4(585-602)Online publication date: 2-Apr-2024
  • (2023)A Fault Localization Technique for Online Programming Learning2023 3rd International Symposium on Computer Technology and Information Science (ISCTIS)10.1109/ISCTIS58954.2023.10213027(486-491)Online publication date: 7-Jul-2023
  • (2023)Model‐Based Techniques for Software Fault LocalizationHandbook of Software Fault Localization10.1002/9781119880929.ch9(393-424)Online publication date: 21-Apr-2023
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cover image ACM Conferences
SAC '09: Proceedings of the 2009 ACM symposium on Applied Computing
March 2009
2347 pages
ISBN:9781605581668
DOI:10.1145/1529282
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: 08 March 2009

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Author Tags

  1. abstract interpretation
  2. fault localization
  3. program spectra

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SAC09
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SAC09: The 2009 ACM Symposium on Applied Computing
March 8, 2009 - March 12, 2008
Hawaii, Honolulu

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Overall Acceptance Rate 1,650 of 6,669 submissions, 25%

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Cited By

View all
  • (2024)SFLVis: visual analysis of software fault localizationJournal of Visualization10.1007/s12650-024-00979-x27:4(585-602)Online publication date: 2-Apr-2024
  • (2023)A Fault Localization Technique for Online Programming Learning2023 3rd International Symposium on Computer Technology and Information Science (ISCTIS)10.1109/ISCTIS58954.2023.10213027(486-491)Online publication date: 7-Jul-2023
  • (2023)Model‐Based Techniques for Software Fault LocalizationHandbook of Software Fault Localization10.1002/9781119880929.ch9(393-424)Online publication date: 21-Apr-2023
  • (2023)Software Fault Localization in SpreadsheetsHandbook of Software Fault Localization10.1002/9781119880929.ch10(425-450)Online publication date: 21-Apr-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)A Survey of Challenges in Spectrum-Based Software Fault LocalizationIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2022.314407910(10618-10639)Online publication date: 2022
  • (2021)HMBFL: Higher-Order Mutation-Based Fault Localization2021 8th International Conference on Dependable Systems and Their Applications (DSA)10.1109/DSA52907.2021.00016(66-77)Online publication date: Aug-2021
  • (2019)An Empirical Framework for Evaluation of Spectral-based Fault Localization Techniques2019 27th Iranian Conference on Electrical Engineering (ICEE)10.1109/IranianCEE.2019.8786754(1834-1838)Online publication date: Apr-2019
  • (2019)Model-Based Software DebuggingFault Diagnosis of Dynamic Systems10.1007/978-3-030-17728-7_15(365-387)Online publication date: 23-Jun-2019
  • (2018)Spectrum-Based Fault Localization Using Fault Triggering Model to Refine Fault Ranking ListIEICE Transactions on Information and Systems10.1587/transinf.2017EDP7386E101.D:10(2436-2446)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2018
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