Relationship between the Verification Based Model and the Functional Dependences Model Using Program Specification

It is generally agreed that faults are very difficult to find, and also expensive to locate and remove from programs. Hence, automating the debugging task is highly desired. This paper presents previous work in automated debugging based on a verification based model, which can detect and localize faults from programs using abstract dependencies. We empirically compare the two models, i.e., Functional Dependencies Model(FDM) and Verification Based Model(VBM). VBM extracts dependencies from the source code of programs. These dependencies are called computed dependencies and are compare with specification of programs to detect a misbehavior. The functional dependency model uses dependencies to state the correctness of variables at the end of a program run. If a variable value is not correct, the model is used to localize the fault. Both models apply Model Based Diagnosis for software debugging. In the paper we compare both models with respect to their capabilities of localizing faults in programs. We also present new results for the VBM of large programs, which further justifies that the approach can be used in practice.

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