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An explanation-based, visual debugger for one-way constraints

Authors:

Bradley T. Vander Zanden,

Jing JinAuthors Info & Claims

UIST '04: Proceedings of the 17th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology

Pages 207 - 216

https://doi.org/10.1145/1029632.1029670

Published: 24 October 2004 Publication History

Abstract

This paper describes a domain-specific debugger for one-way constraint solvers. The debugger makes use of several new techniques. First, the debugger displays only a portion of the dataflow graph, called a <i>constraint slice</i>, that is directly related to an incorrect variable. This technique helps the debugger scale to a system containing thousands of constraints. Second, the debugger presents a visual representation of the solver's data structures and uses color encodings to highlight changes to the data structures. Finally, the debugger allows the user to point to a variable that has an unexpected value and ask the debugger to suggest reasons for the unexpected value. The debugger makes use of information gathered during the constraint satisfaction process to generate plausible suggestions. Informal testing has shown that the explanatory capability and the color coding of the constraint solver's data structures are particularly useful in locating bugs in constraint code.

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Cited By

Weiher MHirschfeld RFuentes LBatory DCzarnecki K(2016)Constraints as polymorphic connectorsProceedings of the 15th International Conference on Modularity10.1145/2889443.2889456(134-145)Online publication date: 14-Mar-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2889443.2889456
Nakazono NMisue KTanaka J(2006)NeL2Proceedings of the 2006 Asia-Pacific Symposium on Information Visualisation - Volume 6010.5555/1151903.1151920(109-115)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2006
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/1151903.1151920

Index Terms

An explanation-based, visual debugger for one-way constraints
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)
    1. Interaction paradigms
      1. Graphical user interfaces
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Software verification and validation
      1. Software defect analysis
        Software testing and debugging
  2. Software notations and tools

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Lessons learned from programmers' experiences with one-way constraints: Research Articles

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Multi-way versus one-way constraints in user interfaces: experience with the DeltaBlue algorithm

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

UIST '04: Proceedings of the 17th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology

October 2004

312 pages

ISBN:1581139578

DOI:10.1145/1029632

General Chair:
Steven K. Feiner
Columbia University
,
Program Chair:
James A. Landay
University of Washington & Intel Research

Copyright © 2004 ACM.

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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Published: 24 October 2004

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UIST04: 17th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology

October 24 - 27, 2004

NM, Santa Fe, USA

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Overall Acceptance Rate 561 of 2,567 submissions, 22%

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Cited By

Weiher MHirschfeld RFuentes LBatory DCzarnecki K(2016)Constraints as polymorphic connectorsProceedings of the 15th International Conference on Modularity10.1145/2889443.2889456(134-145)Online publication date: 14-Mar-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2889443.2889456
Nakazono NMisue KTanaka J(2006)NeL2Proceedings of the 2006 Asia-Pacific Symposium on Information Visualisation - Volume 6010.5555/1151903.1151920(109-115)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2006
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/1151903.1151920

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