Collaborative Research: SHF: Medium: Precise Static Analysis of Event-based Systems

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Event-based programming is used to construct software systems withbillions of users, including mobile apps, Web clients and servers, andInternet-of-Things devices. Despite their popularity, event-basedsystems are poorly understood and prone to errors because theunderlying platform, not the program, generates and invokesevents. These difficulties have wide-ranging consequences such aslosing users' work in mobile apps, silent errors or downtime in Webservices, and unexpected Internet-of-Things device behavior. Thisproject is (1) making event-based systems easier to analyze, (2)constructing an approach for extracting order between certain key eventsbefore the program runs, to prevent ordering errors, and (3) allowingrigorous reasoning about event-induced volatility, to prevent errorssuch as state loss and state inconsistency. The project isintroducing students to new approaches to event-based systemreliability, as well as providing researchers and software developerswith models and infrastructure for analyzing such systems. End-usersare expected to benefit from more reliable event-based systems, whether mobile,browser/server, or Internet-of-Things. The project is increasing theparticipation of underrepresented groups in computing via outreach,mentoring, and research involvement.Event-based systems continue to surge in popularity. The relativenovelty of this paradigm, coupled with essential programmingdifficulties (such as non-deterministic event processing, asynchronousstate manipulation, and state destruction) complicate the constructionof robust, reliable applications. Furthermore, there is a shortage ofprogram-analysis approaches and tools for this space. To address theseissues, this project is introducing program-analysis foundations andpractical tools such as event sensitivity, making eventcreation/initiation a first-class object of program analysis, andallowing precise analysis via path-based event ordering. The projectis intended to result in: static analyses that incorporate the aforementionedadvances, enabling analysis of event-based applications; as well asautomatically-constructed platform models (which addressdeficiencies in current, manual/ad-hoc platform models, and are intended to beusable in other contexts, e.g., to facilitate programunderstanding). The project is targeting the Android mobile platform,JavaScript client and server programs, as well as Internet-of-Thingsapplications. Using these tools, developers and researchers areable to gain effective insights into event-based applicationsfacilitating the construction of reliable applications as well asexposing incorrect behavior in existing programs; this, in turn isbenefiting event-based ecosystems' users.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.