Data mining and cross-checking of execution traces

Abstract

The current trend in debugging and testing is to cross-check information collected during several executions. Jones et al., for example, propose to use the instruction coverage of passing and failing runs in order to visualize suspicious statements. This seems promising but lacks a formal justification. In this paper, we show that the method of Jones et al. can be re-interpreted as a data mining procedure. More particularly, they define an indicator which characterizes association rules between data. With this formal framework we are able to explain intrinsic limitations of the above indicator.