by Hannes Thaller, Lukas Linsbauer, Rudolf Ramler, Alexander Egyed
Abstract:
Software systems are complex, and behavioral comprehension with the increasing amount of AI components challenges traditional testing and maintenance strategies.The lack of tools and methodologies for behavioral software comprehension leaves developers to testing and debugging that work in the boundaries of known scenarios. We present Probabilistic Software Modeling (PSM), a data-driven modeling paradigm for predictive and generative methods in software engineering. PSM analyzes a program and synthesizes a network of probabilistic models that can simulate and quantify the original program's behavior. The approach extracts the type, executable, and property structure of a program and copies its topology. Each model is then optimized towards the observed runtime leading to a network that reflects the system's structure and behavior. The resulting network allows for the full spectrum of statistical inferential analysis with which rich predictive and generative applications can be built. Applications range from the visualization of states, inferential queries, test case generation, and anomaly detection up to the stochastic execution of the modeled system. In this work, we present the modeling methodologies, an empirical study of the runtime behavior of software systems, and a comprehensive study on PSM modeled systems. Results indicate that PSM is a solid foundation for structural and behavioral software comprehension applications.
Reference:
Probabilistic Software Modeling: A Data-driven Paradigm for Software Analysis (Hannes Thaller, Lukas Linsbauer, Rudolf Ramler, Alexander Egyed), In CoRR, volume abs/1912.07936, 2019.
Bibtex Entry:
@Article{DBLP:journals/corr/abs-1912-07936,
author = {Hannes Thaller and Lukas Linsbauer and Rudolf Ramler and Alexander Egyed},
journal = {CoRR},
title = {Probabilistic Software Modeling: {A} Data-driven Paradigm for Software Analysis},
year = {2019},
volume = {abs/1912.07936},
abstract = {Software systems are complex, and behavioral comprehension with the increasing amount of AI components challenges traditional testing and maintenance strategies.The lack of tools and methodologies for behavioral software comprehension leaves developers to testing and debugging that work in the boundaries of known scenarios. We present Probabilistic Software Modeling (PSM), a data-driven modeling paradigm for predictive and generative methods in software engineering. PSM analyzes a program and synthesizes a network of probabilistic models that can simulate and quantify the original program's behavior. The approach extracts the type, executable, and property structure of a program and copies its topology. Each model is then optimized towards the observed runtime leading to a network that reflects the system's structure and behavior. The resulting network allows for the full spectrum of statistical inferential analysis with which rich predictive and generative applications can be built. Applications range from the visualization of states, inferential queries, test case generation, and anomaly detection up to the stochastic execution of the modeled system. In this work, we present the modeling methodologies, an empirical study of the runtime behavior of software systems, and a comprehensive study on PSM modeled systems. Results indicate that PSM is a solid foundation for structural and behavioral software comprehension applications.},
archiveprefix = {arXiv},
bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org},
biburl = {https://dblp.org/rec/journals/corr/abs-1912-07936.bib},
eprint = {1912.07936},
file = {:Journals/CORR 2019 - Probabilistic Software ModelingA Data-driven Paradigm for Software Analysis/Probabilistic Software ModelingA Data-driven Paradigm for Software Analysis-preprints.pdf:PDF},
keywords = {SCCH, LIT},
timestamp = {Fri, 03 Jan 2020 16:10:45 +0100},
url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/1912.07936},
}