Tralfamadore: unifying source code and execution experience

ABSTRACT

Program source is an intermediate representation of software; it lies between a developer's intention and the hardware's execution. Despite advances in languages and development tools, source itself and the applications we use to view it remain an essentially static representation of software, from which developers can spend considerable energy postulating actual behavior.

Emerging techniques in execution logging promise to provide large shared repositories containing high-fidelity recordings of deployed, production software. Tralfamadore is a system that combines source and execution trace analysis to capitalize on these recordings, and to expose information from the "experience" of real execution within the software development environment, allowing developers to inform their understanding of source based on how it behaves during real execution.

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INDEX TERMS

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

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.5 Testing and Debugging
          Subjects: Tracing
      D.2.6 Programming Environments
          Subjects: Interactive environments

  H. Information Systems
  H.3 INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
      H.3.3 Information Search and Retrieval
          Subjects: Information filtering

General Terms:
Design, Experimentation, Languages

Keywords:
debugging, dynamic analysis, program understanding, querying execution, trace analysis