CAREER: Dataflow Analysis for Modern Software Systems

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Proposal Number: 0546040Proposal Title: CAREER: Dataflow Analysis for Modern Software SystemsPI: Atanas Rountev, Ohio State UniversityInterprocedural dataflow analysis plays a central role in tools forsoftware maintenance, testing, verification, and optimization. Modernsoftware has characteristics that cannot be handled by traditionalapproaches: it typically uses multiple distributed components, and itoften employs dynamic mechanisms that are hard to analyze statically.Existing analyses fail in the presence of such features, making ithard to provide sophisticated tool support for real-world softwaresystems. In turn, this reduces programmer productivity and leads tolower software quality. This project focuses on three challenges posedby modern software: reusable components, such as standard libraries;distributed software; and run-time adaptation through dynamic classloading and reflection. This effort is a significant step towardsbuilding powerful software tools that are truly usable and useful inthe software industry.The theoretical foundations of dataflow analysis are generalized toachieve precision and scalability in the presence of reusablecomponents. Widely used analyses (e.g., points-to analysis, MOD/REFanalysis, constant propagation, and object naming) are adapted todistributed component-based systems. The analyses are systematicallygeneralized to handle dynamic language features. Dissemination isachieved through open-source analysis implementations and two programunderstanding tools. The broader impacts of the project include (1)research infrastructure which provides scalable off-the-shelfimplementations of several fundamental static analyses, (2) tools thatsupply high-quality support for program understanding, which willimprove productivity and software quality, and (3) integration of theresearch with education, which will increase the students' proficiencyin current methods and tools for software development, and willaccelerate their career progress.