Event Logs for the Analysis of Software Failures: A Rule-Based Approach

Event logs have been widely used over the last three decades to analyze the failure behavior of a variety of systems. Nevertheless, the implementation of the logging mechanism lacks a systematic approach and collected logs are often inaccurate at reporting software failures: This is a threat to the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on software engineering 2013-06, Vol.39 (6), p.806-821
Main Authors: Cinque, M., Cotroneo, D., Pecchia, A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Analytical models
Computer programs
Computer science
error detection
Event log
Failure
Failure analysis
Faults
Logging
logging mechanism
Logs
Proposals
rule-based logging
Software
Software engineering
software failures
Software quality
Software systems
Studies
Systematics
Systems design
Unified modeling language
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Summary:Event logs have been widely used over the last three decades to analyze the failure behavior of a variety of systems. Nevertheless, the implementation of the logging mechanism lacks a systematic approach and collected logs are often inaccurate at reporting software failures: This is a threat to the validity of log-based failure analysis. This paper analyzes the limitations of current logging mechanisms and proposes a rule-based approach to make logs effective to analyze software failures. The approach leverages artifacts produced at system design time and puts forth a set of rules to formalize the placement of the logging instructions within the source code. The validity of the approach, with respect to traditional logging mechanisms, is shown by means of around 12,500 software fault injection experiments into real-world systems.
ISSN:0098-5589
1939-3520
DOI:10.1109/TSE.2012.67