Program State Monitoring System
Peng Chuan-ning · Journal of Tongji University · 2005
Modern software programs are increasingly complex.In order to effectively monitor pro-gram behaviors,such as the variable value changes,method call sequence,control flow,etc,this pa-per presents a generalized monitoring system—program state monitoring system(PSMS).PSMS al-lows users to specify what kind of run-time information should be collected and stored in its repository.It extends the classical assertion system by allowing declaration anywhere in any file.And also it goes beyond the normal debugging system by providing more run time information and more flexibility.PSMS uses software sensor technique to collect the required program information.A specialized query language is designed to do post-mortem analysis of the collected runtime information.The usage of PSMS is demonstrated with a simple scientific calculator program.Experiments show that PSMS is a useful and efficient tool for monitoring program behaviors.