November 16, 2000
Program errors are hard to find because of the cause-effect gap between the time when an error occurs and the time when the error becomes apparent to the programmer. Although debugging techniques such as conditional and data breakpoints help to find error causes in simple cases, they fail to effectively bridge the cause-effect gap in many situations. Query-based debuggers offer programmers an effective tool that provides instant error alert by continuously checking inter-object relationships while the debugged program is running. To enable the query-based debugger in the middle of program execution in a portable way, we propose efficient Java class file instrumentation and discuss alternative techniques. Although the on-the-fly debugger has a higher overhead than a dynamic query-based debugger, it offers additional interactive power and flexibility while maintaining complete portability. To speed up dynamic query evaluation, our debugger implemented in portable Java uses a combination of program instrumentation, load-time code generation, query optimization, and incremental reevaluation. This paper discusses on-the-fly debugging and demonstrates the query-based debugger application for debugging Java gas tank applet as well as SPECjvm98 suite applications.
Similar papers 1
January 17, 2007
This paper presents a logic based approach to debugging Java programs. In contrast with traditional debugging we propose a debugging methodology for Java programs using logical queries on individual execution states and also over the history of execution. These queries were arrived at by a systematic study of errors in object-oriented programs in our earlier research. We represent the salient events during the execution of a Java program by a logic database, and implement the...
January 3, 2001
Correctness constraints provide a foundation for automated debugging within object-oriented systems. This paper discusses a new approach to incorporating correctness constraints into Java development environments. Our approach uses the Object Constraint Language ("OCL") as a specification language and the Java Debug Interface ("JDI") as a verification API. OCL provides a standard language for expressing object-oriented constraints that can integrate with Unified Modeling Lang...
April 16, 2002
A major part of debugging, testing, and analyzing a complex software system is understanding what is happening within the system at run-time. Some developers advocate running within a debugger to better understand the system at this level. Others embed logging statements, even in the form of hard-coded calls to print functions, throughout the code. These techniques are all general, rough forms of what we call system monitoring, and, while they have limited usefulness in simpl...
April 29, 2019
In the domain of Software Engineering, program analysis and understanding has been considered to be a very challenging task since decade, as it demands dedicated time and efforts. The analysis of source code may occasionally be comparatively easier due to its static nature, however, the back end code (Bytecode), especially in terms of Java programming, is complicated to be analysed. In this paper, we present a methodological approach towards understanding the Bytecode of Java...
November 20, 2000
Model-based reasoning is a central concept in current research into intelligent diagnostic systems. It is based on the assumption that sources of incorrect behavior in technical devices can be located and identified via the existence of a model describing the basic properties of components of a certain application domain. When actual data concerning the misbehavior of a system composed from such components is available, a domain-independent diagnosis engine can be used to inf...
February 4, 2024
We introduce Object Graph Programming (OGO), which enables reading and modifying an object graph (i.e., the entire state of the object heap) via declarative queries. OGO models the objects and their relations in the heap as an object graph thereby treating the heap as a graph database: each node in the graph is an object (e.g., an instance of a class or an instance of a metadata class) and each edge is a relation between objects (e.g., a field of one object references another...
January 12, 2001
This paper shows the debugging facilities provided by the SLAM system. The SLAM system includes i) a specification language that integrates algebraic specifications and model-based specifications using the object oriented model. Class operations are defined by using rules each of them with logical pre and postconditions but with a functional flavour. ii) A development environment that, among other features, is able to generate readable code in a high level object oriented lan...
April 19, 2024
Debugging is an essential part of software maintenance and evolution since it allows software developers to analyze program execution step by step. Understanding a program is required to fix potential flaws, alleviate bottlenecks, and implement new desired features. Thus, software developers spend a large percentage of their time validating and debugging software, resulting in high software maintenance and evolution cost. We aim to reduce this cost by providing a novel visual...
October 30, 2000
Over the past decades automated debugging has seen major achievements. However, as debugging is by necessity attached to particular programming paradigms, the results are scattered. The aims of the workshop are to gather common themes and solutions across programming communities, and to cross-fertilize ideas. AADEBUG 2000 in Munich follows AADEBUG'93 in Linkoeping, Sweden; AADEBUG'95 in Saint Malo, France; AADEBUG'97 in Linkoeping, Sweden.
October 9, 2003
By recording every state change in the run of a program, it is possible to present the programmer every bit of information that might be desired. Essentially, it becomes possible to debug the program by going ``backwards in time,'' vastly simplifying the process of debugging. An implementation of this idea, the ``Omniscient Debugger,'' is used to demonstrate its viability and has been used successfully on a number of large programs. Integration with an event analysis engine f...