Automated And Algorithmic Debugging

Debugging has always been a costly part of software development, and many attempts have been made to provide automatic computer support for this task.Automated debugging has seen major develoments over the last decade. Onesuccessful development is algorithmic debugging, which originated in logic programming but was later generalized to concurrent, imperative, and lazy functional languages. Important advances have also been made in knowledge-based program debugging, and in approaches to automated debugging based on static and dynamic program slicing based on dataflow and dependence analysis technology. This is the first collected volume of papers on automated debugging and presents latest developments, tutorial papers, and surveys.

Abstract: "This thesis presents a novel method for semi-automatic program debugging -- the Generalized Algorithmic Debugging Technique, GADT. The notion of declarative algorithmic debugging was first introduced for logic programming. However, this is the first algorithmic debugging method based on the principle of declarative debugging which can handle the debugging of programs written in an imperative language including loops and side-effects. In order to localize a bug, the debugging algorithm incrementally acquires knowledge about the debugged program. The knowledge is supplied by the user. The algorithm terminates when the bug has been localized to within the body of a procedure or an explicit loop. The generalized algorithmic debugging method uses program transformation and program flow analysis techniques to transform the subject program to a largely side-effect-free internal form which is used for bug localization. Thus, this algorithm defines two views of a program: (1) The user view which is the original program with side-effects and (2) the transformed view which is the transformed side-effect-free version of the original program. Transparent program debugging is supported by maintaining a mapping between these two views. The bug localization algorithm works on the transformed version, whereas user interactions are defined in terms of the user view. We have presented a general technique which it [sic] is not based on any ad-hoc assumptions about the subject program. The flexibility of this method has made it possible to further improve the bug localization algorithm by employing a number of other techniques, i.e. program slicing and test database lookup, thus increasing the degree of automation provided by GADT. These extensions are topics for ongoing research projects and future work. A survey and evaluation of a number of automated debugging systems and the techniques behind these systems are also presented. We have introduced several criteria for comparing these techniques with GADT. A prototype implementation of the generalized algorithmic debugging technique has been carried out to verify its feasibility, and to provide feedback for further refinement of the method. This has already resulted in a more efficient set of transformations, described in the thesis, compared to the initial prototype."

The three-volume set, LNCS 2667, LNCS 2668, and LNCS 2669, constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International Conference on Computational Science and Its Applications, ICCSA 2003, held in Montreal, Canada, in May 2003.The three volumes present more than 300 papers and span the whole range of computational science from foundational issues in computer science and mathematics to advanced applications in virtually all sciences making use of computational techniques. The proceedings give a unique account of recent results in computational science.

The four-volume set LNCS 2657, LNCS 2658, LNCS 2659, and LNCS 2660 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Conference on Computational Science, ICCS 2003, held concurrently in Melbourne, Australia and in St. Petersburg, Russia in June 2003. The four volumes present more than 460 reviewed contributed and invited papers and span the whole range of computational science, from foundational issues in computer science and algorithmic mathematics to advanced applications in virtually all application fields making use of computational techniques. These proceedings give a unique account of recent results in the field.

This book describes automated debugging approaches for the bugs and the faults which appear in different abstraction levels of a hardware system. The authors employ a transaction-based debug approach to systems at the transaction-level, asserting the correct relation of transactions. The automated debug approach for design bugs finds the potential fault candidates at RTL and gate-level of a circuit. Debug techniques for logic bugs and synchronization bugs are demonstrated, enabling readers to localize the most difficult bugs. Debug automation for electrical faults (delay faults)finds the potentially failing speedpaths in a circuit at gate-level. The various debug approaches described achieve high diagnosis accuracy and reduce the debugging time, shortening the IC development cycle and increasing the productivity of designers. Describes a unified framework for debug automation used at both pre-silicon and post-silicon stages; Provides approaches for debug automation of a hardware system at different levels of abstraction, i.e., chip, gate-level, RTL and transaction level; Includes techniques for debug automation of design bugs and electrical faults, as well as an infrastructure to debug NoC-based multiprocessor SoCs.

"This book provides a comprehensive collection of state-of-the-art advancements in rule languages"--Provided by publisher.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed postproceedings of the 16th International Symposium on Logic Based Program Synthesis and Transformation, LOPSTR 2006, held in Venice, Italy, July 2006 in conjunction with ICALP 2006, PPDP 2006, and CSFW 2006. The 14 revised full papers cover tools for program development, partial evaluation and program transformation, security and synthesis, debugging and testing, as well as termination and analysis.