Software Tools Detect Bugs by Inferring Programmer's Intentions

website@infoadvisors.com — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 18:03:00 GMT

What if your data or process modeling tool could check for bugs in your model by inferring your intentions? Computer scientists at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed tools to do just that for programming code:

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – The task of debugging huge computer programs can be made faster and easier by using new software tools developed by programming experts at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Computer science professor Yuanyuan Zhou and her students have assembled a suite of software tools that can find and correct bugs by inferring the programmer’s intentions. The tools draw from observations on how programmers write code.

“Most bug-detection tools require reproduction of bugs during execution,” Zhou said. “The program is slowed down significantly and monitored by these tools, which watch for certain types of abnormal behavior. Most of our tools, however, work by only examining the source code for defects, requiring little effort from programmers.”

An interesting approach to debugging.

Karen Lopez: Musings on Data, Process, and Architecture

Software Tools Detect Bugs by Inferring Programmer's Intentions