Mining API Patterns as Partial Orders From Source Code: From Usage Scenarios to Specifications

A software system interacts with third-party libraries through various APIs. Using these library APIs often needs to follow certain usage patterns. Furthermore, ordering rules (Specifications) exist between APIs, and these rules govern the secure and robust operation of the system using these APIs. But these patterns and rules may not be well documented by the API developers. Previous approaches mine frequent association rules, itemsets, or subsequences that capture API call patterns shared by API client code. However, these frequent API patterns cannot completely capture some useful orderings shared by APIs, especially when multiple APIs are involved across different procedures.