Complexity Estimation Approach for Debugging in Parallel

Multiple faults in a software many times prevent debuggers from efficiently localizing a fault. This is mainly due to not knowing the exact number of faults in a failing program as some of the faults get obfuscated. Many techniques have been proposed to isolate different faults in a program thereby creating separate sets of failing program statements. To evenly divide these statements amongst debuggers we must know the level of work required to debug that slice. In this paper we propose a new technique to calculate the complexity of faulty program slices to efficiently distribute the work among debuggers for simultaneous debugging. The technique calculates the complexity of entire slice by taking into account the suspiciousness of every faulty statement. To establish the confidence in effectiveness and efficiency of proposed techniques we illustrate the whole idea with help of an example. Results of analysis indicate the technique will be helpful (a) for efficient distribution of work among debuggers (b) will allow simultaneous debugging of different faulty program slices (c) will help minimize the time and manual labor.