Data Mining Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques

Software fault localization, the act of identifying the locations of faults in a program, is widely recognized to be one of the most tedious, time consuming, and expensive – yet equally critical – activities in program debugging. Due to the increasing scale and complexity of software today, manually locating faults when failures occur is rapidly becoming infeasible, and consequently, there is a strong demand for techniques that can guide software developers to the locations of faults in a program with minimal human intervention. This demand in turn has fueled the proposal and development of a broad spectrum of fault localization techniques, each of which aims to streamline the fault localization process and make it more effective by attacking the problem in a unique way. In this article, we catalog and provide a comprehensive overview of such techniques and discuss key issues and concerns that are pertinent to software fault localization as a whole.

A Survey on Software Fault Localization

Analysis of Contingency Tables

Research at the intersection of machine learning, programming languages, and software engineering has recently taken important steps in proposing learnable probabilistic models of source code that exploit code's abundance of patterns. In this article, we survey this work. We contrast programming languages against natural languages and discuss how these similarities and differences drive the design of probabilistic models. We present a taxonomy based on the underlying design principles of each model and use it to navigate the literature. Then, we review how researchers have adapted these models to application areas and discuss cross-cutting and application-specific challenges and opportunities.

A Survey of Machine Learning for Big Code and Naturalness

Research at the intersection of machine learning, programming languages, and software engineering has recently taken important steps in proposing learnable probabilistic models of source code that exploit the abundance of patterns of code. In this article, we survey this work. We contrast programming languages against natural languages and discuss how these similarities and differences drive the design of probabilistic models. We present a taxonomy based on the underlying design principles of each model and use it to navigate the literature. Then, we review how researchers have adapted these models to application areas and discuss cross-cutting and application-specific challenges and opportunities.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3212695

Effective debugging is crucial to producing reliable software. Manual debugging is becoming prohibitively expensive, especially due to the growing size and complexity of programs. Given that fault localization is one of the most expensive activities in program debugging, there has been a great demand for fault localization techniques that can help guide programmers to the locations of faults. In this paper, a technique named DStar (D*) is proposed which can suggest suspicious locations for fault localization automatically without requiring any prior information on program structure or semantics. D* is evaluated across 24 programs, and is compared to 38 different fault localization techniques. Both single-fault and multi-fault programs are used. Results indicate that D* is more effective at locating faults than all the other techniques it is compared to. An empirical evaluation is also conducted to illustrate how the effectiveness of D* increases as the exponent * grows, and then levels off when the exponent * exceeds a critical value. Discussions are presented to support such observations.

The DStar Method for Effective Software Fault Localization

Effective debugging is crucial to producing dependable software. Manual debugging is becoming prohibitively expensive, especially due to the growing size and complexity of programs. Given that fault localization is one of the most expensive activities in program debugging, there has been a great demand for fault localization techniques that can help guide programmers to the locations of faults. In this paper a technique named DStar (D*), which has its origins rooted in similarity coefficient-based analysis, is proposed, which can identify suspicious locations for fault localization automatically without requiring any prior information on program structure or semantics. D* is evaluated across 21 programs and is compared to 16 different fault localization techniques. Both single-fault and multi-fault programs are used. Results indicate that D* is more effective at locating faults than all the other techniques it is compared to.

/pdf/software-fault-localization-using-dstar-d-tkjh8nqpow.pdf

Software Fault Localization Using DStar (D

Context: Ontologies are known as a formal and explicit conceptualization of entities, their interfaces, behaviors, and relationships. They have been applied in various application domains such as autonomous driving where ontologies are used for decision making, traffic description, auto-pilot etc. It has always been a challenge to test the corresponding safety-critical software systems in autonomous driving that have been playing an increasingly important role in our daily routines. Objective: Failures in these systems potentially not only cause great financial loss but also the loss of lives. Therefore, it is vital to obtain and cover as many as critical driving scenarios during auto drive testing to ensure that the system can always reach a fail-safe state under different circumstances. Method: We outline a general framework for testing, verification, and validation for automated and autonomous driving functions. The introduced method makes use of ontologies for describing the environment of autonomous vehicles and convert them to input models for combinatorial testing. The combinatorial test suite comprises abstract test cases that are mapped to concrete test cases that can be executed using simulation environments. Results: We discuss in detail on how to automatically convert ontologies to the corresponding combinatorial testing input models. Specifically, we present two conversion algorithms and compare their applicability using ontologies with different sizes. We also carried out a case study to further demonstrate the practical value of applying ontology-based test generation in industrial settings. Conclusion: The proposed approach for testing autonomous driving takes ontologies describing the environment of autonomous vehicles, and automatically converts it to test cases that are used in a simulation environment to verify automated driving functions. The conversion relies on combinatorial testing. The first experimental results relying on an example from the automotive industry indicates that the approach can be used in practice.

Ontology-based test generation for automated and autonomous driving functions

In this paper, we outline a general automated testing approach to be applied for verification and validation of automated and autonomous driving functions. The approach makes use of ontologies of environment the system under test is interacting with. Ontologies are automatically converted into input models for combinatorial testing, which are used to generate test cases. The obtained abstract test cases are used to generate concrete test scenarios that provide the basis for simulation used to verify the functionality of the system under test. We discuss the general approach including its potential for automation in the automotive domain where there is growing need for sophisticated verification based on simulation in case of automated and autonomous vehicles.

Yihao Li

Papers

A Survey on Software Fault Localization

The DStar Method for Effective Software Fault Localization

Software Fault Localization Using DStar (D

Ontology-based test generation for automated and autonomous driving functions

Using Ontologies for Test Suites Generation for Automated and Autonomous Driving Functions