Delta execution for efficient state-space exploration of object-oriented programs
Marcelo d’Amorim, Steven Lauterburg, Darko Marinov · 2007
State-space exploration is the essence of model checking and an increasingly popular approach for automating test generation. A key issue in exploration of object-oriented programs is handling the program state, in particular the heap. Previous research has focused on standard program execution that operates on one state/heap. We present Delta Execution, a technique that simultaneously operates on several states/heaps. It exploits the fact that many execution paths in state-space exploration partially overlap and speeds up the exploration by sharing the common parts across the executions and separately executing only the "deltas" where the executions differ.