Recovering Behavioral Design Models from Execution Traces

TLDR

Recovering behavioral design models from execution traces is challenging because of the large size of typical traces, and our approach filters traces by separating utility components from those implementing high-level concepts. The paper presents a novel technique for recovering behavioral design models from execution traces. The method defines utilities, applies a fan‑in analysis algorithm to detect them, and uses UCM notation to represent the resulting high-level behavioral models. The approach was validated on the object‑oriented system TConfig.

Abstract

Recovering behavioral design models from execution traces is not an easy task due to the sheer size of typical traces. In this paper, we describe a novel technique for achieving this. Our approach is based on filtering traces by distinguishing the utility components from the ones that implement high-level concepts. In the paper, we first define the concept of utilities; then we present an algorithm based on fan-in analysis that can be used for the detection of utilities. To represent the high-level behavioral models, we explore the use case map (UCM) notation, which is a language used to describe and understand emergent behavior of complex and dynamic systems. Finally, we test the validity of our approach on an object-oriented system called TConfig.