Tool support for executable documentation of Java class hierarchies

While object‐oriented programming offers great solutions for today's software developers, this success has created difficult problems in class documentation and testing. In Java, two tools provide assistance: Javadoc allows class interface documentation to be embedded as code comments and JUnit supports unit testing by providing assert constructs and a test framework. This paper describes JUnitDoc, an integration of Javadoc and JUnit, which provides better support for class documentation and testing. With JUnitDoc, test cases are embedded in Javadoc comments and used as both examples for documentation and test cases for quality assurance. JUnitDoc extracts the test cases for use in HTML files serving as class documentation and in JUnit drivers for class testing. To address the difficult problem of testing inheritance hierarchies, JUnitDoc provides a novel solution in the form of a parallel test hierarchy. A small controlled experiment compares the readability of JUnitDoc documentation to formal documentation written in Object‐Z. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Synthesis of verifiable concurrent Java components from formal models

Software and Systems Modeling - Concurrent systems are hard to program, and ensuring quality by means of traditional testing techniques is often very hard as errors may not show up easily and...     

Linda implementations in Java for concurrent systems

This paper surveys a number of the implementations of Linda that are available in Java. It provides some discussion of their strengths and weaknesses, and presents the results from benchmarking experiments using a network of commodity workstations. Some extensions to the original Linda programming model are also presented and discussed, together with examples of their application to parallel processing problems. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

一种新的并行Java程序的监护模型

提出了一种新的并行Java程序异常处理的监护模型。该模型针对并行Java程序异步信息传递方式进行异常处理。当并行Java程序的某个线程出现异常时,该线程的监护模块把检测到的异常情况的信息传递到其它线程的监护模块,每个线程根据当前事项与异常事项的向量时钟关系,对当前事项进行回滚或停止操作,以达到对并行Java程序的保护。过去一些并行程序的监护方案是在信息交换的基础上把并行程序结构化为许多原子行为,把多个并行异常当作单个异常进行处理,具有较大的局限性。提出的监护模型是从全局上对并行Java程序的异常情况进行处理,并指导每个线程根据自身情况作出相应反映。实验证明提出的新的并行Java程序监护模型具有较强的实际操作性,并能有效地保护并行Java程序。     

对Java并发程序进行模型检测

随着多核处理器的发展,多线程并发程序成为现代程序设计的趋势.但并发线程的执行存在不确定性,传统的测试方法很难发现这类错误.针时这个问题,提出了一种直接分析Java源代码,从中提取并发程序模型的方法;并以此方法为基础开发了工具JTS(Java to SPIN),实现了对Java并发程序的自动化分析和模型检测.实验表明JTS能够成功地检测出Java并发程序中存在的错误并给出相应的错误路径.这项工作给Java并发程序的测试与验证提供了新的途径.     

A deadlock detection tool for concurrent Java programs

This paper presents some issues related to the design and implementation of a concurrency analysis tool able to detect deadlock situations in Java programs that make use of multithreading mechanisms. An abstract formal model is generated from the Java source using the Java2Spin translator. The model is expressed in the PROMELA language, and the SPIN tool is used to perform its formal analysis. The paper mainly focuses on the design of the Java2Spin translator. A set of experiments, carried out to evaluate the performances of the analysis tool, is also presented. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Java语言的度量及工具实现

简述了面向对象软件度量的最新进展,并设计和实现了基于目前流行的Ｃ＆Ｋ度量方法的Ｊａｖａ语言度量工具。     

Self-adaptive concurrent components

Selecting the optimum component implementation variant is sometimes difficult since it depends on the component’s usage context at runtime, e.g., on the concurrency level of the application using the component, call sequences to the component, actual parameters, the hardware available etc. A conservative selection of implementation variants leads to suboptimal performance, e.g., if a component is conservatively implemented as thread-safe while during the actual execution it is only accessed from a single thread. In general, an optimal component implementation variant cannot be determined before runtime and a single optimal variant might not even exist since the usage contexts can change significantly over the runtime. We introduce self-adaptive concurrent components that automatically and dynamically change not only their internal representation and operation implementation variants but also their synchronization mechanism based on a possibly changing usage context. The most suitable variant is selected at runtime rather than at compile time. The decision is revised if the usage context changes, e.g., if a single-threaded context changes to a highly contended concurrent context. As a consequence, programmers can focus on the semantics of their systems and, e.g., conservatively use thread-safe components to ensure consistency of their data, while deferring implementation and optimization decisions to context-aware runtime optimizations. We demonstrate the effect on performance with self-adaptive concurrent queues, sets, and ordered sets. In all three cases, experimental evaluation shows close to optimal performance regardless of actual contention.     

Replay and testing for concurrent programs

Attention is given to the problems that arise during the testing and debugging cycle of concurrent programs because of their nondeterministic execution behavior, whereby multiple executions of a concurrent program with the same input may exercise different synchronization sequences and even produce different results. These problems are solved by using deterministic execution debugging and testing. The purpose of deterministic execution debugging to to replay executions of a concurrent program so that debugging information can be collected. Examples of semaphores and monitors are used to illustrate the approach and the process of designing replay tubes is described. The use of regression testing to see if earlier debugging and testing introduced new errors, is examined     

Runtime support for scalable programming in Java

The paper research is concerned with enabling parallel, high-performance computation—in particular development of scientific software in the network-aware programming language, Java. Traditionally, this kind of computing was done in Fortran. Arguably, Fortran is becoming a marginalized language, with limited economic incentive for vendors to produce modern development environments, optimizing compilers for new hardware, or other kinds of associated software expected of by today’s programmers. Hence, Java looks like a very promising alternative for the future. The paper will discuss in detail a particular environment called HPJava. HPJava is the environment for parallel programming—especially data-parallel scientific programming—in Java. Our HPJava is based around a small set of language extensions designed to support parallel computation with distributed arrays, plus a set of communication libraries. A high-level communication API, Adlib, is developed as an application level communication library suitable for our HPJava. This communication library supports collective operations on distributed arrays. We include Java Object as one of the Adlib communication data types. So we fully support communication of intrinsic Java types, including primitive types, and Java object types.     

A Java extension with support for dimensions

We present an extension to the Java language with support for physical dimensions and units of measurement. This should reduce programming errors in scientific and technological areas. We discuss various aspects of dimensions and units, and then design principles for support in programming languages. An overview of earlier work shows that some language extensions focused on units, whereas we argue that dimensions are a better starting point; units can then simply be treated as constants. Then we present the Java extension, and show how to define and use dimensions and units. The communication between the program and the outer world gets special attention. The programmer can still make dimensional errors there, but we claim the risk is reduced. It has been simple to build support for this extension into an existing Java compiler. We outline the applied technique. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Internationalization support in Java

This article presents new technology in Java that gives developers the power to produce commercial-grade internationalized software. The Java environment, that is, the Java programming language, VirtualMachine, and Java Development Kit (JDK), provides a more elegant, robust, comprehensive scheme for creating global software than any other platform in widespread use today     

Establishing structural testing criteria for Java bytecode

This paper describes intra‐method control‐flow and data‐flow testing criteria for the Java bytecode language. Six testing criteria are considered for the generation of testing requirements: four control‐flow and two data‐flow based. The main reason to work at a lower level is that, even when there is no source code, structural testing requirements can still be derived and used to assess the quality of a given test set. It can be used, for instance, to perform structural testing on third‐party Java components. In addition, the bytecode can be seen as an intermediate language, so the analysis performed at this level can be mapped back to the original high‐level language that generated the bytecode. To support the application of the testing criteria, we have implemented a tool named JaBUTi (Java Bytecode Understanding and Testing). JaBUTi is used to illustrate the application of the ideas developed in this paper. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Java-MaC: A Run-time Assurance Tool for Java Programs

We describe Java-MaC, a prototype implementation of the Monitoring and Checking (MaC) architecture for Java programs. The MaC architecture provides assurance about the correct execution of target programs at run-time. Monitoring and checking is performed based on a formal specification of system requirements. MaC bridges the gap between formal verification, which ensures the correctness of a design rather than an implementation, and testing, which only partially validates an implementation. Java-MaC provides a lightweight formal method solution as a viable complement to the current heavyweight formal methods. An important aspect of the architecture is the clear separation between monitoring implementation-dependent low-level behaviors and checking high-level behaviors against a formal requirements specification. Another salient feature is automatic instrumentation of executable codes. The paper presents an overview of the MaC architecture and a prototype implementation Java-MaC.     

A combinatorial testing strategy for concurrent programs

One approach to testing concurrent programs is called reachability testing, which derives test sequences automatically and on‐the‐fly, without constructing a static model. Existing reachability testing algorithms are exhaustive in that they are intended to exercise all possible synchronization sequences of a concurrent program with a given input. In this paper, we present a new testing strategy, called t‐way reachability testing, that adopts the dynamic framework of reachability testing but selectively exercises a subset of synchronization sequences. The selection of the synchronization sequences is based on a combinatorial testing strategy called t‐way testing. We present an algorithm that implements t‐way reachability testing, and report the results of several case studies that were conducted to evaluate its effectiveness. The results indicate that t‐way reachability testing can substantially reduce the number of synchronization sequences exercised during reachability testing while still effectively detecting faults. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Slicing concurrent Java programs using Indus and Kaveri

Program slicing is a program analysis and transformation technique that has been successfully used in a wide range of applications including program comprehension, debugging, maintenance, testing, and verification. However, there are only few fully featured implementations of program slicing that are available for industrial applications or academic research. In particular, very little tool support exists for slicing programs written in modern object-oriented languages such as Java, C#, or C++. In this paper, we present Indus—a robust framework for analyzing and slicing concurrent Java programs, and Kaveri—a feature-rich Eclipse-based GUI front end for Indus slicing. For Indus, we describe the underlying tool architecture, analysis components, and program dependence capabilities required for slicing. In addition, we present a collection of advanced features useful for effective slicing of Java programs including calling-context sensitive slicing, scoped slicing, control slicing, and chopping. For Kaveri, we discuss the design goals and basic capabilities of the graphical facilities integrated into a Java development environment to present the slicing information. This paper is an extended version of a tool demonstration paper presented at the International Conference on Fundamental Aspects of Software Engineering (FASE 2005). Thus, the paper highlights tool capabilities and engineering issues and refers the reader to other papers for technical details. This work was supported in part by the US Army Research Office (DAAD190110564), by DARPA/IXO’s PCES program (AFRL Contract F33615-00-C-3044), by NSF (CCR-0306607) by Lockheed Martin, and and by Intel Corporation.     

Tool support for fine-grained software inspection

Software inspection is a proven technique to improve quality and reduce costs. Detailed source code inspections are an important part of the formal inspection process, but they require a significant time investment. Research advances in static program analysis can reduce the inspection time required. By calculating answers to standard inspection questions, CodeSurfer frees experts to focus their efforts on more challenging inspection issues. CodeSurfer provides access to and answers queries about the system-dependence graph representation of programs, and can be integrated with other tools.     

一种Java语言图形编程工具的设计与实现

提出一种用于Java语言的图形编程工具的设计方法.它基于元建模机制设计图形编程语言,采用模型-视图-控制器(MVC)构架模式实现图形编辑器,并设计代码转换器完成从图形代码到对应文本代码的等价转换.通过在机器人编程游戏中的实际使用,证明其满足实际需要,大大提高图形编程语言的设计效率,增强了图形编辑器的可维护性与可复用性.这种设计方法也可以用来设计其他语言的图形编程工具.     

Robustness testing for software components

Component-based development allows one to build software from existing components and promises to improve software reuse and reduce costs. For critical applications, the user of a component must ensure that it fits the requirements of the application. To achieve this, testing is a well-suited means when the source code of the components is not available. Robustness testing is a testing methodology to detect the vulnerabilities of a component under unexpected inputs or in a stressful environment. As components may fail differently in different states, we use a state machine based approach to robustness testing. First, a set of paths is generated to cover transitions of the state machine, and it is used by the test cases to bring the component into a specific control state. Second, method calls with invalid inputs are fed to the component in different states to test the robustness. By traversing the paths, the test cases cover more states and transitions compared to stateless API testing. We apply our approach to several components, including open source software, and compare our results with existing approaches.     

Structural testing of concurrent programs

Although structural testing techniques are among the weakest available with regard to developing confidence in sequential programs, they are not without merit. The authors extend the notion of structural testing criteria to concurrent programs and propose a hierarchy of supporting structural testing techniques. Coverage criteria described include concurrency state coverage, state transition coverage and synchronization coverage. Requisite support tools include a static concurrency analyzer and either a program transformation system or a powerful run-time monitor. Also helpful is a controllable run-time scheduler. The techniques proposed are suitable for Ada or CSP-like languages. Best results are obtained for programs having only static naming of tasking objects