Skip to main navigation Skip to search Skip to main content

SENSA: Sensitivity analysis for quantitative change-impact prediction

  • Haipeng Cai
  • , Siyuan Jiang
  • , Raul Santelices
  • , Ying Jie Zhang
  • , Yiji Zhang
  • University of Notre Dame
  • Tsinghua University

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

13 Scopus citations

Abstract

Sensitivity analysis determines how a system responds to stimuli variations, which can benefit important software-engineering tasks such as change-impact analysis. We present SENSA, a novel dynamic-analysis technique and tool that combines sensitivity analysis and execution differencing to estimate the dependencies among statements that occur in practice. In addition to identifying dependencies, SENSA quantifies them to estimate how much or how likely a statement depends on another. Quantifying dependencies helps developers prioritize and focus their inspection of code relationships. To assess the benefits of quantifying dependencies with SENSA, we applied it to various statements across Java subjects to find and prioritize the potential impacts of changing those statements. We found that SENSA predicts the actual impacts of changes to those statements more accurately than static and dynamic forward slicing. Our SENSA prototype tool is freely available for download.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings - 2014 14th IEEE International Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation, SCAM 2014
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages165-174
Number of pages10
ISBN (Electronic)9780769553047
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 4 2014
Event14th IEEE International Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation, SCAM 2014 - Victoria, Canada
Duration: Sep 28 2014Sep 29 2014

Publication series

NameProceedings - 2014 14th IEEE International Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation, SCAM 2014

Conference

Conference14th IEEE International Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation, SCAM 2014
Country/TerritoryCanada
CityVictoria
Period09/28/1409/29/14

Keywords

  • Change-impact prediction
  • dependence analysis
  • execution differencing
  • sensitivity analysis

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'SENSA: Sensitivity analysis for quantitative change-impact prediction'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this