PhD Dissertation Proposal by LE Bui Tien Duy

Fusion Based Approaches for Software Fault Localization and Specification Mining

Debugging and writing formal specifications are important tasks to maintain quality and reliability of software systems. However, the two processes often take much effort and resources. To help developers debug, many fault localization techniques have been proposed. These techniques process textual information in bug reports or program spectra (i.e., a record of which program elements are executed for each test case). Eventually, fault localization techniques generate a ranked list of program elements that are likely to contain the bug. On the other hand, to deal with the absence of formal specifications, researchers have proposed techniques to infer the missing specifications of an implementation in a variety of forms, such as finite state automaton (FSA). Unfortunately, the efficacy of existing techniques is not perfect yet and more work is needed to bring the techniques closer to fully satisfy the needs of developers. In this dissertation, I propose a number of fusion based approaches to improve the effectiveness of fault localization and specification mining. These fusion based approaches combine the strength of different techniques and various sources of information to create more effective solutions. My goal is to lessen the high expense of debugging and writing formal specifications in order to enhance the productivity of developers and software quality.

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