Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

acceptedVersion

Publication Date

3-2012

Abstract

Specification mining takes execution traces as input and extracts likely program invariants, which can be used for comprehension, verification, and evolution related tasks. In this work we integrate scenario-based specification mining, which uses a data-mining algorithm to suggest ordering constraints in the form of live sequence charts, an inter-object, visual, modal, scenario-based specification language, with mining of value-based invariants, which detects likely invariants holding at specific program points. The key to the integration is a technique we call scenario-based slicing, running on top of the mining algorithms to distinguish the scenario-specific invariants from the general ones. The resulting suggested specifications are rich, consisting of modal scenarios annotated with scenario-specific value-based invariants, referring to event parameters and participating object properties. We have implemented the mining algorithm and the visual presentation of the mined scenarios within a standard development environment. An evaluation of our work over a number of case studies shows promising results in extracting expressive specifications from real programs, which could not be extracted previously. The more expressive the mined specifications, the higher their potential to support program comprehension and testing.

Keywords

Specification mining, Dynamic analysis, Live sequence charts, Value-based invariants

Discipline

Software Engineering

Research Areas

Software and Cyber-Physical Systems

Publication

Automated Software Engineering

Volume

19

Issue

4

First Page

423

Last Page

458

ISSN

0928-8910

Identifier

10.1007/s10515-012-0103-x

Publisher

Springer

Copyright Owner and License

Authors

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10515-012-0103-x

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