Blogs (1) >>
ASE 2019
Sun 10 - Fri 15 November 2019 San Diego, California, United States
Thu 14 Nov 2019 14:00 - 14:20 at Cortez 2&3 - Mining and Bug Detection Chair(s): Chanchal K. Roy

Context Specification mining techniques are typically used to extract the specification of a software in the absence of (up-to-date) specification documents. This is useful for program comprehension, testing, and anomaly detection. However, specification mining can also potentially be used for debugging, where a faulty behavior is abstracted to give developers a context about the bug and help them locating it.

Objective In this project, we investigate this idea in an industrial setting. We propose a very basic semi-automated specification mining approach for debugging and apply that on real reported issues from an AutoPilot software system from our industry partner, MicroPilot Inc. The objective is to assess the feasibility and usefulness of the approach in a real-world setting.

Method The approach is developed as a prototype tool, working on C code, which accept a set of relevant state fields and functions, per issue, and generates an extended finite state machine that represents the faulty behavior, abstracted with respect to the relevant context (the selected fields and functions).

Results We qualitatively evaluate the approach by a set of interviews (including observational studies) with the company’s developers on their real-world reported bugs. The results show that (a) our approach is feasible, (b) it can be automated to some extent, and (c) brings advantages over only using their code-level debugging tools. We also compared this approach with traditional fully automated state-merging algorithms and reported several issues when applying those techniques on a real-world debugging context.

Conclusion The main conclusion of this study is that the idea of an “interactive” specification mining rather than a fully automated mining tool is NOT impractical and indeed is useful for the debugging use case.

Thu 14 Nov

ase-2019-paper-presentations
13:40 - 15:20: Papers - Mining and Bug Detection at Cortez 2&3
Chair(s): Chanchal K. RoyUniversity of Saskatchewan
ase-2019-Journal-First-Presentations13:40 - 14:00
Talk
Automatically 'Verifying' Complex Systems through Learning, Abstraction and Refinement
Jingyi WangNational University of Singapore, Singapore, Jun SunSingapore Management University, Singapore, Shengchao QinUniversity of Teesside, Cyrille JegourelISTD, Singapore University of Technology and Design
Link to publication
ase-2019-Journal-First-Presentations14:00 - 14:20
Talk
Interactive semi-automated specification mining for debugging: An experience report
Mohammad Jafar MashhadiUniversity of Calgary, Taha R. SiddiquiInfoMagnetics Technologies Corp, Hadi HemmatiUniversity of Calgary, Howard W. LoewenDepartment of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Calgary
Link to publication
ase-2019-Journal-First-Presentations14:20 - 14:40
Talk
Improving reusability of software libraries through usage pattern mining
Mohamed Aymen SaiedConcordia University, Ali OuniETS Montreal, University of Quebec, Houari SahraouiUniversité de Montréal, Raula Gaikovina KulaNAIST, Katsuro InoueOsaka University, David LoSingapore Management University
Link to publication
ase-2019-Journal-First-Presentations14:40 - 15:00
Talk
Rule-based specification mining leveraging learning to rank
Zherui CaoZhejiang University, Yuan TianQueens University, Kingston, Canada, Tien-Duy B. LeSchool of Information Systems, Singapore Management University, David LoSingapore Management University
Link to publication
ase-2019-Demonstrations15:00 - 15:10
Demonstration
TsmartGP: A Tool for Finding Memory Defects with Pointer Analysis
Yuexing WangTsinghua University, Guang ChenTsinghua University, Min ZhouTsinghua University, Ming GuTsinghua University, Jiaguang SunTsinghua University
ase-2019-Demonstrations15:10 - 15:20
Demonstration
Ares: Inferring Error Specifications through Static Analysis
Li ChiTsinghua University, Zuxing GuSchool of Software, Tsinghua University, Min ZhouTsinghua University, Ming GuTsinghua University, Hongyu ZhangThe University of Newcastle