How Does Exception Handling Behavior Evolve? An Exploratory Study in Java and C# Applications

Cacho, Nélio; Barbosa, Eiji Adachi; Araújo, Juliana Iscarlaty Freire de; Pranto, Frederico; Garcia, Alessandro; César, Thiago; Soares, Eliezio; Cassio, Arthur; Filipe, Thomas; García, Israel Quintanilla

doi:10.1109/icsme.2014.25

Cited by 30 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Although one may think that the failure depicted in the previous example is not frequent because its cause seems simple, previous studies have shown that similar failures are commonly observed in software systems (CACHO et al, 2014a, CACHO et al, 2014b. In previous studies conducted by Cacho et al, re-mapped exceptions left uncaught was the most frequent cause of failures in the analyzed systems.…”

Section: Problem Statement and Limitations Of Related Workmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…Global exceptions are those raised and handled in di↵erent methods of a program , CACHO et al, 2009,ROBILLARD and MURPHY, 1999,ROBILLARD and MURPHY, 2003. In fact, all failures reported in previous studies were caused by global exceptions (CACHO et al, 2014a,CACHO et al, 2014b,COELHO et al, 2008.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This example was chosen because it is easy to understand and illustrates recurring failures whose causes are located in the exception handling code. This example was also chosen because it illustrates commonly reported failures caused by global exceptions (CACHO et al, 2014a, CACHO et al, 2014b, COELHO et al, 2008. As one can observe in the diagram depicted in Figure 1.1, the structure of the Health Watcher system is separated into multiple tiers: GUI, Façade, Business and Persistence.…”

Section: Problem Statement and Limitations Of Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, despite being intended to improve software robustness, the causes of recurring failures in software systems are located in the exception handling code (CACHO et al, 2014a, CACHO et al, 2014b, COELHO et al, 2008,MARINESCU, 2011,MARINESCU, 2013,SAWADPONG et al, 2012. In particular, common failures are caused by global exceptions being left uncaught or being caught in the wrong place in the system (CACHO et al, 2014a, CACHO et al, 2014b,COELHO et al, 2008.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In particular, common failures are caused by global exceptions being left uncaught or being caught in the wrong place in the system (CACHO et al, 2014a, CACHO et al, 2014b,COELHO et al, 2008. Global exceptions are those raised and handled in di↵erent methods of a program , CACHO et al, 2009,ROBILLARD and MURPHY, 1999,ROBILLARD and MURPHY, 2003.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Global-Aware Recommendations for Repairing Exception Handling Violations

BARBOSA¹

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Exception handling is the most common way of dealing with exceptions in robust software development. Exception handling refers to the process of signaling exceptions upon the detection of runtime errors and taking actions to respond to their occurrence. Despite being aimed at improving software robustness, software systems are still implemented without relying on explicit exception handling policies. Each policy defines the design decisions governing how exception handling should be implemented in a system. These policies are often not documented and are only implicitly defined in the system design. Thus, developers tend to introduce in the source code violations of implicit policies and these violations commonly cause failures in software systems. In this context, the goal of this thesis is to support developers in detecting and repairing exception handling violations. To achieve this goal, two complementary solutions were proposed. The first solution is based on a domain-specific language supporting the detection of violations by explicitly defining exception handling policies to be enforced in the source code. The proposed language was evaluated with a user-centric study and a case study. With the observations and experiences gathered in the user-centric study, we identified some language characteristics that hindered its use and that motivated new language constructs. In addition, the results of the case study showed that violations and faults in exception handling share common causes. Therefore, violations can be used to detect potential causes of exceptionrelated failures. To complement the detection of exception handling violations, this work also proposed a solution for supporting the repair of exception handling violations. Repairing these violations requires reasoning about the global impact that exception handling changes might have in di↵erent parts of the system. Thus, this work proposed a recommender heuristic strategy that takes into account the global context of where violations occur to produce recommendations. Each recommendation produced consists of a sequence of modifications that serves as a detailed blueprint of how an exception handling violation can be removed from the source code. The proposed recommender strategy also takes advantage of explicit policy specifications, although their availability is not mandatory. The results of our empirical assessments revealed that the proposed recommender strategy produced recommendations able to Tratamento de exceçõesé o modo mais comum de lidar com erros no desenvolvimento de software robusto. Tratamento de exceções refere-se ao processo de sinalizar exceções quando erros em tempo de execução são detectados e de tomar ações para responderà ocorrência destas exceções. Apesar de objetivarem a melhoria da robustez de software, sistemas de software ainda são implementados sem se basear em uma política explícita para tratamento de exceções. Cada política define as decisões de projeto que governam como tratamento de exceções deve ser implementado num sis...

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Section: Problem Statement and Limitations Of Related Workmentioning

confidence: 93%