Aristotle Research Group

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Aristotle Research Group

• Mary Jean Harrold
• Research in Program Analysis
• Based Software Engineering
• Georgia Tech

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Research Goal

• We investigate ways to improve the techniques and
  tools used by software developers and
  maintainers, allowing them to create high quality
  software more efficiently

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Our Approach
Automated Techniques for Software Engineering
Tasks

Our research often follows a spiraling work flow,
each step giving new insight into the next
Experimentation
Enabling Technology
Implementation of Tools
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Our Approach
Automated Techniques for Software Engineering
Tasks

• We research techniques for use in situations such
  as
• When a program fails (produces incorrect output,
  behaves unexpectedly, crashes, etc.), find the
  cause or location of the failure (debugging,
  fault localization)
• When changes are made to a program, determine
  which test cases need to be rerun (selective
  regression testing)
• When a programmer joins an existing project
  where little documentation is available, extract
  architecture and design of software (program
  understanding)

Our research often follows a spiraling work flow,
each step giving new insight into the next
Experimentation
Enabling Technology
Implementation of Tools
5
Our Approach
Automated Techniques for Software Engineering
Tasks

• We research techniques for use in situations such
  as
• When a program fails (produces incorrect output,
  behaves unexpectedly, crashes, etc.), find the
  cause or location of the failure (debugging,
  fault localization)
• When changes are made to a program, determine
  which test cases need to be rerun (selective
  regression testing)
• When a programmer joins an existing project
  where little documentation is available, extract
  architecture and design of software (program
  understanding)

Experimentation
Enabling Technology
Enabling Technology
Implementation of Tools
6
Our Approach
Automated Techniques for Software Engineering
Tasks

Experimentation
Enabling Technology
Enabling Technology
Implementation of Tools
7
Our Approach
Automated Techniques for Software Engineering
Tasks

Experimentation
Enabling Technology
Experimentation With Research Techniques
Implementation of Tools
8
Our Approach
Automated Techniques for Software Engineering
Tasks

Experimentation
Enabling Technology
Experimentation With Research Techniques
Implementation of Tools
9
Our Approach
Automated Techniques for Software Engineering
Tasks

Experimentation
Enabling Technology
Implementation of Tools
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Our Approach
Automated Techniques for Software Engineering
Tasks

Experimentation
Enabling Technology
Implementation of Tools
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Research Projects

• Some current research projects
• Determine, for evolving software, the subset of
  tests that should be run on the changed version
  (test suite selection, prioritization, and
  reduction, augmentation, DejaVu, DejaVoo)
• Determine possible flow of control, and assist
  with understanding, testing, and maintenance
  programs with exception-handling constructs
  (exception analysis. ExPo)
• Automatically discover program behaviors after or
  during system execution (using machine learning)
  (behavior modeling and classification, Gimbal)
• Automatically identify, for programs that fail,
  those statements that likely contain the fault
  (fault-localization, debugging, Tarantula)
• Monitor and analyze deployed software to improve
  quality (Gamma)
• Illuminate, using visualization techniques,
  relations and phenomena in the software not
  apparent with traditional inspection (software
  visualization)
• Analyze C and Java programs to facilitate
  research prototypes and tools (Aristotle, JABA)

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Support, Activities

• Our research has been supported by
• Government agencies such as National Science
  Foundation, NASA
• Companies such as Boeing, IBM, Lucent, Microsoft,
  Tata Consultancy Services
• We present our research results in
• Journals such as IEEE Transactions on Software
  Engineering, ACM Transactions on Software
  Engineering and Methodology, Journal of Software
  Testing, Verification, and Reliability
• Conferences such as International Conference on
  Software Engineering, ACM International Symposium
  on Software Testing and Analysis, ACM Foundations
  of Software Engineering, and IEEE International
  Conference on Software Maintenance

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Students

• Our students actively participate by
• Developing new techniques and algorithms
• Implementing tools in a variety of languages
• Performing experimentation to verify their
  techniques
• Preparing research papers for conferences and
  journals
• Presenting papers at major conferences
• Participating in the preparation of research
  proposals

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For More Information

See our web site at http//www.cc.gatech.edu/aris
totle