Combining Slicing and Constraint Solving for Better Debugging: The CONBAS Approach

In this paper, the authors present an approach that combines an advanced dynamic slicing method with constraint solving in order to reduce the number of delivered fault candidates. The approach is called CONstraints BAsed Slicing (CONBAS). The idea behind CONBAS is to convert an execution trace of a failing test case into its constraint representation and to check if it is possible to find values for all variables in the execution trace so that there is no contradiction with the test case. For doing so, they make use of the correctness and incorrectness assumptions behind a diagnosis, the given failing test case. Beside the theoretical foundations and the algorithm, they present empirical results and discuss future research.