A Survey of Dynamic Program Analysis Techniques and Tools

Summary

This paper is written by Anjana Gosain and Ganga Sharma and published on FICTA in 2014. The main purpose of this paper was to provide a survey of dynamic program analysis techniques and tools. Generally, a dynamic analysis technique involves two phases: 1) program instrumentation and profile/trace generation, 2) analysis or monitoring. Moreover, the dynamic program analysis techniques were classified into three categories: 1) Instrumentation Based, 2) VM profiling Based, 3) AOP(Aspect Oriented Programming) Based. Their merits and demerits were listed in the paper. Addtionally, many C++/Java-targeted tools were introduced in the paper.

English Learning

1. words:
   polymorphism
   merit, demerit
   invaluable
   drawback
   expertise
2. phrases:
   give emphasis on
   devise techniques
   gather information
   render static analysis imprecise
   run-time overheads
   violations of properties
3. technical phrases:
   program instrumentation
   profile/trace generation