Program repair suggestions from graphical state-transition specifications

Abstract

In software engineering, graphical formalisms, like state- transition tables and automata, are very often indispensable parts of the specifications. Such a formalism usually leads to specification refinement that maintains the simulation/bisimulation relation between an implementation and a specification. We investigate how to use formal techniques to generate suggestions for repairing a program that breaks the bisimulation relation with a graphical specification. We use state graphs as a unified representation of the program models and specifications. We propose a technique that may evaluate the cost of a repair. We present a PTIME heuristic algorithm that suggests how to repair a model state graph. We then explain how to derive repair suggestions for programs from the repair for state graphs. Finally, we report our experiment that checks the performance of our repair algorithms and the costs of our repairs. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.