Abstract:

Fault localization is time consuming in the process of software debugging. Combining the automatic fault location technology with the automatic testing technology, high efficiency of software debugging can be realized. We propose an improved software fault localization technology based on crossover matrix statistics. We firstly conduct clustering reduction for all traces (successful or not) before localizing the faults so as to eliminate redundant execution traces. The remaining execution traces are stored in the crossover matrix. Finally the dubiety degree of the statements in the crossover matrix is calculated by the Crosstab algorithm and ranked to get the fault report. Performance experiments before and after the clustering reduction of traces on Siemens Suites verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.   

Key words: fault localization, clustering reduction, crossover matrix, performance comparison