ORBS and the limits of static slicing

Observation-based slicing is a recently-introduced,
language-independent, slicing technique based on the dependencies
observable from program behaviour. Due to the wellknown
limits of dynamic analysis, we may only compute an
under-approximation of the true observation-based slice. However,
because the observation-based slice captures all possible
dependence that can be observed, even such approximations can
yield insight into the limitations of static slicing. For example,
a static slice, S that is strictly smaller than the corresponding
observation based slice is guaranteed to be unsafe. We present
the results of three sets of experiments on 12 different programs,
including benchmarks and larger programs, which investigate
the relationship between static and observation-based slicing. We
show that, in extreme cases, observation-based slices can find
the true static minimal slice, where static techniques cannot.
For more typical cases, our results illustrate the potential for
observation-based slicing to highlight unsafe static slices. Finally,
we report on the sensitivity of observation-based slicing to test
quality.

© 2015 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.