Parametric trace slicing and monitoring

Analysis of execution traces plays a fundamental role in many program analysis approaches. Execution traces are frequently parametric, i.e., they contain events with parameter bindings. Each parametric trace usually consists of many trace slices merged together, each slice corresponding to a parameter binding. Several techniques have been proposed to analyze parametric traces, but they have limitations: some in the specification formalism, others in the type of traces they support; moreover, they share common notions, intuitions, even techniques and algorithms, suggesting that a fundamental understanding of parametric trace analysis is needed. This foundational paper gives the first solution to parametric trace analysis that is unrestricted by the type of parametric properties or traces that can be analyzed. First, a general purpose parametric trace slicing technique is discussed, which takes each event in the parametric trace and distributes it to its corresponding trace slices. This parametric trace slicing technique can be used in combination with any conventional, non-parametric trace analysis, by applying the latter on each trace slice. An online monitoring technique is then presented based on the slicing technique, providing a logic-independent solution to runtime verification of parametric properties. The presented monitoring technique has been implemented and extensively evaluated. The results confirm that the generality of the discussed techniques does not come at a performance expense when compared with existing monitoring systems.