Software Diagnostics Institute

Bugs are inevitable in software during its construction. Even, if good coding practices such as test-driven development, checklists for writing effective code, and using well-tested standards-based libraries instead of crafting your own eliminate non-functional defects such as resource leaks and crashes, functional defects are there to stay. On the other hand, if test cases show that functional requirements are met, some non-functional defects such as leaks may evade detection and manifest themselves during later phases of development. Therefore, it is vital to start diagnosing all kinds of software defects as earlier as possible. Here, pattern-oriented software diagnostics may help by providing problem patterns (what to look for), and analysis patterns (how to look for) for different types of software execution artifacts such as memory dumps and software logs. The following two best practices we found useful during the development of various software over the last 15 years:

• Periodic memory dump analysis of processes. Such analysis can be done offline after a process finished its execution or just-in-time by attaching a debugger to it.
• Adding trace statements as earlier as possible for checking various conditions, the correct order of execution, and the state. Such Declarative Trace allows earlier application of pattern-oriented trace and log analysis. Typical analysis patterns at this stage of software construction include Significant Events, Event Sequence Order, Data Flow, State Dump, and Counter Value.

We plan to explain this proposed software development process further and provide practical examples (with source code) in the next parts.