Injecting Execution Traces into a Model-Driven Framework for Program Analysis

Abstract

Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) has been successfully used in static program analysis. Frameworks like MoDisco inject the program structure into a model, available for further processing by query and transformation tools, e.g., for program understanding, reverse-engineering, modernization. In this paper we present our first steps towards extending MoDisco with capabilities for dynamic program analysis. We build an injector for program execution traces, one of the basic blocks of dynamic analysis. Our injector automatically instruments the code, executes it and captures a model of the execution behavior of the program, coupled with the model of the program structure. We use the trace injection mechanism for model-driven impact analysis on test sets. We identify some scalability issues that remain to be solved, providing a case study for future efforts in improving performance of model-management tools.