An Automata-Based Approach to Property Testing in Event Traces

Abstract

We present a framework for property testing where a partially ordered execution trace of a distributed system is modeled by a collection of communicating automata. We prove that the model exactly characterizes the causality relation between the events in the observed trace. We present the implementation of this approach in SDL, where ObjectGEODE is used to verify properties, and illustrate the approach with an industrial case study.

Dynamic analysis of java applications for multithreaded antipatterns

“…The antipatterns could be formalized with automata using an LTL to automata transformation tool or directly in an automata specification system, such as in [9]. Automata specifications for these two antipatterns were previously developed for Flavers/Java static analysis tool [18].…”

“…Forking (start) of the new thread is modeled by a message send-receive pair. For other, more difficult, thread related Java constructs, we follow a distributed trace approach [9] which assumes that only events of the same thread (process) or transition of information from one thread to another are ordered. Unlike the classical distributed trace analysis, Java threads communicate not by messages, but by means of shared data, object locking, and several designated methods, such as join(), wait(), notify().…”

Dynamic analysis of java applications for multithreaded antipatterns

“…The antipatterns could be formalized with automata using an LTL to automata transformation tool or directly in an automata specification system, such as in [9]. Automata specifications for these two antipatterns were previously developed for Flavers/Java static analysis tool [18].…”

Reverse Engineering Models from Traces to Validate Distributed Systems – An Industrial Case Study

“…This type of analysis is also known as runtime verification or passive testing of distributed systems [2]. In this context, an approach has been developed [5,6,7] that takes as input an execution trace of the system obtained during the execution of a test scenario. Such a recorded trace, which contains a causally ordered sequence of send/receive events or messages exchanged between system components, is reverse-engineered to produce a model in the form of a system of communicating state machines that reflects the system behavior as it occurred during the execution of that particular test scenario.…”