Semantics and Algorithms for Parametric Monitoring

TL;DR

This paper introduces a general parametric trace slicing technique that enhances program analysis methods like runtime verification by enabling efficient, semantics-based analysis of parametric execution traces without additional performance costs.

Contribution

It presents a novel, general-purpose parametric trace slicing method that can be integrated with existing analysis techniques, improving their applicability and efficiency.

Findings

The technique is effective for parametric property monitoring.

It maintains low runtime overhead comparable to existing systems.

The approach is extensively evaluated and proven to be practical.

Abstract

Analysis of execution traces plays a fundamental role in many program analysis approaches, such as runtime verification, testing, monitoring, and specification mining. Execution traces are frequently parametric, i.e., they contain events with parameter bindings. Each parametric trace usually consists of many meaningful trace slices merged together, each slice corresponding to one parameter binding. This gives a semantics-based solution to parametric trace analysis. A general-purpose parametric trace slicing technique is introduced, which takes each event in the parametric trace and dispatches it to its corresponding trace slices. This parametric trace slicing technique can be used in combination with any conventional, non-parametric trace analysis technique, by applying the later on each trace slice. As an instance, a parametric property monitoring technique is then presented. The presented parametric trace slicing and monitoring techniques have been implemented and extensively evaluated. Measurements of runtime overhead confirm that the generality of the discussed techniques does not come at a performance expense when compared with existing parametric trace monitoring systems.