A Hybrid Approach to Propagation Analysis

Propagation analysis is a dynamic code analysis technique that can be used to quantitatively assess certain software properties that are otherwise difficult to assess, such as testability, safety and security. The currently accepted analysis technique relies heavily on repeated execution of the code being assessed, and is therefore very expensive to apply. We are currently developing static analysis methods to assist in the dynamic assessment. Our aim is to replace the most expensive parts of the dynamic analysis technique with less expensive and nearly as accurate static analysis techniques. This paper summarizes our ideas on how this can be done. 1 Introduction When thinking about testing, the kind of testing that most often comes to mind is running software to determine if it functions correctly or not. Testing the functionality of a system is of course important, and is probably the most common type of testing. But there are other aspects of a system that need testing as well. Sys..