CONFORMANCE EXECUTION WITH SYSTEM CALL FOOTPRINTS

摘要

Conformance execution is a new approach in whichexecution of software is checked and verified at runtime toconform to certain properties. The check and verification inconformance execution is performed, so far, only at thelevel of software specifications such that discords at theboundary of software interface methods can be detectedduring software execution. While conceptually innovativeand practically significant, conformance execution at thesoftware specification level has a key disadvantage: It isimpossible to check and verify runtime behaviors of software,which, arguably, is the core for improving softwareassurance and quality. This paper thus introduces a newapproach to conformance execution such that the check andverification are performed at the level of software runtimebehaviors. Our approach is based upon a formal model ofprogram execution, which allows software runtime eventsto be formulated systematically using system call footprints.