Software feature location in practice: debugging aircraft simulation systems

Abstract

In this paper, we report on a study that we have conducted at CAE, one of the largest civil aircraft simulation companies in the world, in which we have developed a feature location approach to help software engineers debug simulation scenarios. A simulation scenario consists of a set of software components, configured in a certain way. A simulation fails when it does not behave as intended. This is typically a sign of a configuration problem. To detect configuration errors, we propose FELODE (Feature Location for Debugging), an approach that uses a single trace combined with user queries. When applied to CAE systems, FELODE achieves in average a precision of 50% and a recall of up to 100%.

Signature-based detection of behavioural deviations in flight simulators - Experiments on FlightGear and JSBSim

“…Other studies have used data mining approaches for issue prediction in flight simulators. Hoseini et al [30] proposed FELODE (Feature Location for Debugging) to detect configuration errors, using a semi-automated approach that combines a single execution trace and user feedback to locate the connections among modules that are the most relevant to an observed failure.…”