Title :
Understanding distributed systems via execution trace data
Author :
Moc, J. ; Carr, David A.
Author_Institution :
Ericsson Radio Syst. AB, Linkoping, Sweden
Abstract :
One of the most challenging problems facing today´s software engineer is to understand and modify distributed systems. One reason is that in actual use systems frequently behave differently than the designer intended. We describe a three-step method to allow a developer to understand the run-time behavior of a distributed system. First, remote procedure calls are traced using CORBA interceptors. Next, the trace data is parsed to construct RPC call-return sequences, and summary statistics are generated. Finally, a visualization tool is used to study the statistics and look for anomalous behavior. We are testing this method on a large distributed system (more than 600,000 lines of code) during operation at a customer´s site. Despite the fact that the system has been in operation for over three years, we are finding system configuration and efficiency problems using the method
Keywords :
distributed object management; program visualisation; remote procedure calls; reverse engineering; software tools; CORBA; RPC call-return sequences; distributed systems understanding; execution trace data; program understanding; program visualization tool; remote procedure calls; run-time behavior; summary statistics; Cellular networks; Data mining; Data visualization; Design engineering; Personnel; Runtime environment; Software systems; Statistical distributions; System testing; Telephony;
Conference_Titel :
Program Comprehension, 2001. IWPC 2001. Proceedings. 9th International Workshop on
Conference_Location :
Toronto, Ont.
Print_ISBN :
0-7695-1131-7
DOI :
10.1109/WPC.2001.921714
