Single stepping in event-visualization tools

ABSTRACT

Event visualization tools are commonly used to facilitate the debugging of distributed applications. Although these tools provide a graphical view of distributed executions, they are frequently insufficient for full debugging purposes. The need for traditional debugging operations is often overlooked when building these tools. One of the most useful operations in traditional debuggers is single stepping. However, the difficulties faced when dealing with partially ordered-executions have deterred the development of a single-stepping method for concurrent processes. This paper describes a single-stepping operations suitable for event-visualization tools. Three different methods for single stepping are presented: global-step, step-over and step-in. Abstraction techniques are commonly used to reduce the overwhelming amount of detail presented to the user. Accordingly, single stepping in the presence of abstraction is considered. The operations defined in this paper have been implemented in Poet, a Partial Order Event Tracer, and examples of the resulting visualizations are given.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.5 Testing and Debugging
          Subjects: Distributed debugging

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.5 Testing and Debugging
          Subjects: Testing tools (e.g., data generators, coverage testing); Code inspections and walk-throughs

General Terms:
Algorithms, Design, Reliability, Theory, Verification