Practical Exception Specifications

Malayeri, Donna; Aldrich, Jonathan

doi:10.1007/11818502_11

Cited by 19 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…For example, many database APIs that convert table entries into objects for ease of programmer manipulation may return null objects if the requested entity is not in the database. Runtime dependency on external systems (e.g., databases) can significantly reduce the effectiveness of testing in finding potential null pointer dereferences [21,28].…”

Section: Motivating Examplesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Changing Java's Semantics for Handling Null Pointer Exceptions

Dobolyi

Weimer

2008

2008 19th International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE)

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We envision a world where no exceptions are raised; instead, language semantics are changed so that operations are total functions. Either an operation executes normally or tailored recovery code is applied where exceptions would have been raised. As an initial step and evaluation of this idea, we propose to transform programs so that null pointer dereferences are handled automatically without a large runtime overhead. We increase robustness by replacing code that raises null pointer exceptions with error-handling code, allowing the program to continue execution. Our technique first finds potential null pointer dereferences and then automatically transforms programs to insert null checks and error-handling code. These transformations are guided by composable, context-sensitive recovery policies. Errorhandling code may, for example, create default objects of the appropriate types, or restore data structure invariants. If no null pointers would be dereferenced, the transformed program behaves just as the original.We applied our transformation in experiments involving multiple benchmarks, the Java Standard Library, and externally reported null pointer exceptions. Our technique was able to handle the reported exceptions and allow the programs to continue to do useful work, with an average execution time overhead of less than 1% and an average bytecode space overhead of 22%.

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Section: Motivating Examplesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Changing Java's Semantics for Handling Null Pointer Exceptions

Dobolyi

Weimer

2008

2008 19th International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE)

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“…In the abnormal control theory, there are two basic methods: interrupt and recovery. The Java language using interrupt mode, where the exception happened after the termination of the executing, program process to exception handling and exception handling finished, returned to the calling point to continue, with no exception occurs and the contents of the normal program execution of the reserve [1][2][3].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Research on the Novel and Efficient Mechanism of Exception Handling Techniques for Java

Xiaoqing¹

2015

Proceedings of the 2015 Conference on Informatization in Education, Management and Business

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Abstract. With the development of software engineering and other computer science techniques, the application of Java based system is becoming popular. In this paper, we conduct theoretical analysis the novel and efficient mechanism of exception handling technique for Java. Not surprisingly, recurring failures and performance issues are often related to the poor exception handling actions implemented in real software systems. Exception handling mechanisms are meant to improve software robustness. Our proposed approach solves the issues well and effective.

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“…Consequently, there is no way to automatically check the source code conformance to the intended exception handling policy. Malayeri and Aldrich (MALAYERI and ALDRICH, 2006) extended Java to support the specification and verification of exceptions at module boundaries, as proposed by the method of Robillard and Murphy. Malayeri and Aldrich specify and verify exceptional interfaces at the module level, instead of at the method level, as performed by the Java compiler.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

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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Practical Exception Specifications

Cited by 19 publications

References 14 publications

Changing Java's Semantics for Handling Null Pointer Exceptions

Changing Java's Semantics for Handling Null Pointer Exceptions

Research on the Novel and Efficient Mechanism of Exception Handling Techniques for Java

Global-Aware Recommendations for Repairing Exception Handling Violations

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