Article

JThreadSpy: teaching multithreading programming by analyzing execution traces

Authors:

Giovanni Malnati,

Caterina Maria Cuva,

Claudia BarberisAuthors Info & Claims

PADTAD '07: Proceedings of the 2007 ACM workshop on Parallel and distributed systems: testing and debugging

Pages 3 - 13

https://doi.org/10.1145/1273647.1273650

Published: 09 July 2007 Publication History

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Abstract

Multithreading introduces a degree of complexity that is often difficult to grasp by beginners both because of many false assumptions made about the scheduling process and because it is not possible to adopt a trial and error strategy aimed at figuring out what exactly happens during the execution, as a consequence of the intrinsic non determinism of threaded execution.

This article describes JThreadSpy, a tool for dynamic instrumentation of Java programs, aimed at registering execution traces of each thread and displaying them with a selectable level of detail.

JThreadSpy relies on the ASM framework to dynamically instrument methods during class loading, in order to insert suitable method calls that produce an execution trace that is later used to display an annotated UML sequence diagram, highlighting different threads and synchronization constructs.

JThreadSpy proved to be a valuable tool for students engaged in an object-oriented programming course at Politecnico di Torino. By graphically analysing execution flows, students could understand, in an easier way, the non-determinism introduced by the scheduler, the effects of synchronization constructs, the impact of multicore processor architectures, as well as identify critical sections, deadlocks and other anomalies of concurrent programs.

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Pourjafarian MJahic J(2021)ArchViMP – a Framework for Automatic Extraction of Concurrency-related Software Architectural Properties50th International Conference on Parallel Processing Workshop10.1145/3458744.3473349(1-10)Online publication date: 9-Aug-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3458744.3473349
Ghaleb TAljasser KAlturki M(2020)Enhanced Visualization of Method Invocations by Extending Reverse-engineered Sequence Diagrams2020 Working Conference on Software Visualization (VISSOFT)10.1109/VISSOFT51673.2020.00010(49-60)Online publication date: Sep-2020
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Ghaleb TAlturki MAljasser K(2018)Program comprehension through reverse‐engineered sequence diagramsJournal of Software: Evolution and Process10.1002/smr.196530:11Online publication date: 14-Nov-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1002/smr.1965
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JThreadSpy: teaching multithreading programming by analyzing execution traces

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Published In

PADTAD '07: Proceedings of the 2007 ACM workshop on Parallel and distributed systems: testing and debugging

July 2007

72 pages

ISBN:9781595937483

DOI:10.1145/1273647

Program Chairs:
Shmuel Ur
IBM Haifa Research Center, Israel
,
Eitan Farchi
IBM Haifa Research Center, Israel

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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SIGPLAN: ACM Special Interest Group on Programming Languages

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 09 July 2007

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ISSTA07: International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis

July 9, 2007

London, United Kingdom

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Cited By

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Pourjafarian MJahic J(2021)ArchViMP – a Framework for Automatic Extraction of Concurrency-related Software Architectural Properties50th International Conference on Parallel Processing Workshop10.1145/3458744.3473349(1-10)Online publication date: 9-Aug-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3458744.3473349
Ghaleb TAljasser KAlturki M(2020)Enhanced Visualization of Method Invocations by Extending Reverse-engineered Sequence Diagrams2020 Working Conference on Software Visualization (VISSOFT)10.1109/VISSOFT51673.2020.00010(49-60)Online publication date: Sep-2020
https://doi.org/10.1109/VISSOFT51673.2020.00010
Ghaleb TAlturki MAljasser K(2018)Program comprehension through reverse‐engineered sequence diagramsJournal of Software: Evolution and Process10.1002/smr.196530:11Online publication date: 14-Nov-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1002/smr.1965
De Raffaele CSmith SGemikonakli O(2017)Explaining multi-threaded task scheduling using tangible user interfaces in higher educational contexts2017 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON)10.1109/EDUCON.2017.7943028(1383-1390)Online publication date: Apr-2017
https://doi.org/10.1109/EDUCON.2017.7943028
Ferber M(2015)FerbJmon Tools - Visualizing Thread Access on Java Objects using Lightweight Runtime MonitoringEuro-Par 2015: Parallel Processing Workshops10.1007/978-3-319-27308-2_13(147-159)Online publication date: 18-Dec-2015
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27308-2_13
Waller JWulf CFittkau FDohring PHasselbring W(2013)Synchrovis: 3D visualization of monitoring traces in the city metaphor for analyzing concurrency2013 First IEEE Working Conference on Software Visualization (VISSOFT)10.1109/VISSOFT.2013.6650520(1-4)Online publication date: Sep-2013
https://doi.org/10.1109/VISSOFT.2013.6650520
Mishra AMisra A(2011)Formal Aspects of Specification and Validation of Dynamic Adaptive System by Analyzing Execution Traces2011 Eighth IEEE International Conference and Workshops on Engineering of Autonomic and Autonomous Systems10.1109/EASe.2011.14(49-58)Online publication date: Apr-2011
https://doi.org/10.1109/EASe.2011.14
Mishra AChaurasia ABhadkoliya PMisra A(2011)Collecting the Inter Component Interactions in Multithreaded EnvironmentAdvances in Computer Science and Information Technology10.1007/978-3-642-17857-3_44(452-461)Online publication date: 2011
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-17857-3_44
Alawneh LHamou-Lhadj A(2009)Execution Traces: A New Domain That Requires the Creation of a Standard MetamodelAdvances in Software Engineering10.1007/978-3-642-10619-4_31(253-263)Online publication date: 2009
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-10619-4_31
Malnati GCuva CBarberis C(2008)JThreadSpyProceedings of the 2008 International Conference on Computer Science and Software Engineering - Volume 0510.1109/CSSE.2008.11(549-552)Online publication date: 12-Dec-2008
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/CSSE.2008.11

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