Mining temporal program properties

Andreas Zeller
Saarland University  
http://www.st.cs.uni-sb.de/zeller/

Abstract: 

When using an API, programmers not only need to take care of issuing
the correct calls with the correct arguments.  Often, the individual
services of an API also must be invoked in a specific order; likewise,
the arguments are typically constructed using specific API calls.  Our
tools mine program code and program executions to derive
typestate-like models of such call sequences for objects and
parameters. Using such models, we uncover real-life bugs in real-life
programs like AspectJ Ð bugs where the sequence of construction
methods for arguments deviates from common (and correct) usage.