A UML model-based approach to detect infeasible paths

Kundu, Debasish; Sarma, Monalisa; Samanta, Debasis

doi:10.1016/j.jss.2015.05.007

Cited by 10 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 29 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Instead of detecting one infeasible path at a time by examining path constraint, recognizing infeasible code pattern can detect a group of infeasible paths. e infeasible code pattern [4,44] can be extracted from empirical study on the common properties of infeasible paths. Paths containing infeasible code pattern can be reported as infeasible immediately.…”

Section: Static Techniquementioning

confidence: 99%

Infeasible Path Detection Based on Code Pattern and Backward Symbolic Execution

Yang

Zhang

Gong

2020

Mathematical Problems in Engineering

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper sets out to reveal the relationship between code pattern and infeasible paths and gives advices to the selection of infeasible path detection techniques. Lots of program paths are proved to be infeasible, which leads to imprecision and low efficiency of program analysis. Detection of infeasible paths is required in many areas of software engineering including test coverage analysis, test case generation, and security vulnerability analysis. The immediate cause of path infeasibility is the contradiction of path constraints, whose distribution will affect the performance of different program analysis techniques. But there is a lack of research on the distribution of contradict constraints currently. We propose a code pattern based on the empirical study of infeasible paths; the statistical result proves the correlation of the pattern with contradict constraints. We then develop a path feasibility detection method based on backward symbolic execution. Performance of the proposed technique is evaluated from two aspects: the efficiency of detecting infeasibility paths for specific program element and the improvement of applying the technique on code coverage testing.

show abstract

Section: Static Techniquementioning

confidence: 99%

Infeasible Path Detection Based on Code Pattern and Backward Symbolic Execution

Yang

Zhang

Gong

2020

Mathematical Problems in Engineering

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Modelbased approaches [10], [17] differ in terms of the model types they process and generate. Approaches targeting UML activity diagrams aim at identifying sequences of actions that satisfy certain properties, such as guaranteeing some form of structural coverage [18], [19] or exercising concurrent behaviors [20], [21]. Approaches that generate test cases directly from textual descriptions [16], [22]- [25] seek to minimize the use of models, by relying mostly on requirements specifications in natural language.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bridging the Gap between Requirements Modeling and Behavior-Driven Development

Alférez

Pastore

Sabetzadeh

et al. 2019

2019 ACM/IEEE 22nd International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems (MODELS)

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Acceptance criteria (AC) are implementation agnostic conditions that a system must meet to be consistent with its requirements and be accepted by its stakeholders. Each acceptance criterion is typically expressed as a naturallanguage statement with a clear pass or fail outcome. Writing AC is a tedious and error-prone activity, especially when the requirements specifications evolve and there are different analysts and testing teams involved. Analysts and testers must iterate multiple times to ensure that AC are understandable and feasible, and accurately address the most important requirements and workflows of the system being developed. In many cases, analysts express requirements through models, along with natural language, typically in some variant of the UML. AC must then be derived by developers and testers from such models. In this paper, we bridge the gap between requirements models and AC by providing a UML-based modeling methodology and an automated solution to generate AC. We target AC in the form of Behavioral Specifications in the context of Behavioral-Driven Development (BDD), a widely used agile practice in many application domains. More specially we target the well-known Gherkin language to express AC, which then can be used to generate executable test cases. We evaluate our modeling methodology and AC generation solution through an industrial case study in the financial domain. Our results suggest that (1) our methodology is feasible to apply in practice, and (2) the additional modeling effort required by our methodology is outweighed by the benefits the methodology brings in terms of automated and systematic AC generation and improved model precision.

show abstract

“…However, there are also some cases that do not follow any of the four proposed code patterns, and the prototype tool only implements a simple constant substitution for predicates with arithmetic and bitwise operations. Kundu et al [23] construct a graph model (called SIG), from which MM paths, execution sequences of model elements from the start to end of a method scope, are generated. Subsequently, they determine infeasibility of the MM paths by the Mutually Exclusive (MUX) and Null Reference Check (NLC) patterns.…”

Section: A Static Techniquementioning

confidence: 99%

Detecting Interprocedural Infeasible Paths Based on Unsatisfiable Path Constraint Patterns

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The static analysis plays an important role in many software engineering activities. However, the existence of infeasible paths, which causes lower program test coverage and several false positives in the results of the static analysis, has become one of the biggest challenges for the static analysis. In this paper, based on unsatisfiable path constraint patterns, we present a new approach to detect interprocedural infeasible paths. In our approach, we first discover nine unsatisfiable path constraint patterns by mining the common path constraint features of a large number of infeasible paths. Then, we detect the interprocedural infeasible paths; a detected path is deemed to be an interprocedural infeasible path if its simplified constraint conditions match one of the nine unsatisfiable path constraint patterns. To illustrate and verify the approach, an experimental study is performed on five open source C projects. The results show that compared with the existing approach, our approach requires less time on average and detects more interprocedural infeasible paths among the given paths. INDEX TERMS Static analysis, infeasible path, constraint pattern, interprocedural analysis.

show abstract

A UML model-based approach to detect infeasible paths

Cited by 10 publications

References 29 publications

Infeasible Path Detection Based on Code Pattern and Backward Symbolic Execution

Infeasible Path Detection Based on Code Pattern and Backward Symbolic Execution

Bridging the Gap between Requirements Modeling and Behavior-Driven Development

Detecting Interprocedural Infeasible Paths Based on Unsatisfiable Path Constraint Patterns

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About