Formal concept analysis enhances fault localization in software

  • Authors:

  • Peggy Cellier;Mireille Ducassé;Sébastien Ferré;Olivier Ridoux

  • Affiliations:

  • IRISA, University of Rennes 1 and IRISA, INSA de Rennes;IRISA, INSA de Rennes;IRISA, University of Rennes 1;IRISA, University of Rennes 1

  • Venue:
  • ICFCA'08 Proceedings of the 6th international conference on Formal concept analysis
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

Recent work in fault localization crosschecks traces of correct and failing execution traces. The implicit underlying technique is to search for association rules which indicate that executing a particular source line will cause the whole execution to fail. This technique, however, has limitations. In this article, we first propose to consider more expressive association rules where several lines imply failure. We then propose to use Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) to analyze the resulting numerous rules in order to improve the readability of the information contained in the rules. The main contribution of this article is to show that applying two data mining techniques, association rules and FCA, produces better results than existing fault localization techniques.