On real-time software testing and debugging

Testing and debugging of real-time software systems are difficult because of timing constraints imposed on them and because of their nondeterministic behavior. Conventional static analysis is not adequate to deal with the violation of timing constraints which are inherent in real-time software systems. The authors present a dynamic analysis method which uses the recorded run-time information to test and debug this kind of timing error. Based on the proposed approach, a noninterference monitoring system architecture has been developed to collect the process-level and function-level program execution data of a target real-time software system without affecting its execution. Different-leveled logical views are then reconstructed from this collected run-time information. A dynamic analysis method is then presented to analyze the timing behavior of real-time software systems