ECML PKDD 2008

Mining Edge-Weighted Call Graphs to Localise Software Bugs

An important problem in software engineering is the automated discovery of noncrashing occasional bugs. In this work we address this problem and show that mining of weighted call graphs of program executions is a promising technique. We mine weighted graphs with a combination of structural and numerical techniques. More specifically, we propose a novel reduction technique for call graphs which introduces edge weights. Then we present an analysis technique for such weighted call graphs based on graph mining and on traditional feature selection schemes. The technique generalises previous graph mining approaches as it allows for an analysis of weights. Our evaluation shows that our approach finds bugs which previous approaches cannot detect so far. Our technique also doubles the precision of finding bugs which existing techniques can already localise in principle.