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Call-Graph Based Program Analysis with .Net

Call-Graph Based Program Analysis with .Net
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Author(s): Walter Prins (University of Liverpool, The Netherlands)and Paul Darbyshire (Victoria University, Australia)
Copyright: 2007
Pages: -4
Source title: Managing Worldwide Operations and Communications with Information Technology
Source Editor(s): Mehdi Khosrow-Pour, D.B.A. (Information Resources Management Association, USA)
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-59904-929-8.ch180
ISBN13: 9781599049298
EISBN13: 9781466665378

Abstract

Software development is a complex business, whether maintaining or extending existing legacy systems, or whether developing new systems. Another challenge faced by programmers, is determining whether sufficiently rigorous unit- and integration-testing is employed to give confidence that a system is behaving as intended. One approach to help address such challenges is to use automated program analysis tools and techniques, where the programmer will use a software tool to gain an insight into some aspect of the system they’re working on. One particular type of static program analysis technique, call-graph analysis, focuses on the calling relationships that exist in a program. One of the common problems with this and other static analysis techniques is that they tend to be source language based and are therefore often limited in terms of applicability, especially in multi-language/module systems. In this research we investigate call-graph analysis on the .Net platform that sidesteps these common limitations and allows analysis of programs regardless of source language, and regardless of the number of modules/assemblies in the program. We demonstrate the soundness and usefulness of the approach by demonstrating the analysis of a multi-module application that is written in several different source languages from 2 different vendors.

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