Using run-time data for program comprehension

Traditional approaches for program comprehension use static program analysis or dynamic program analysis in the form of execution traces. Our approach, however, makes use of runtime-data such as parameter and object values. Compared to traditional program comprehension techniques, this approach enables fundamentally new ways of program analysis which we have not seen so far. Reflection analysis which allows engineers to understand programs making use of reflective (dynamic) method invocations is one such analysis. Another is object tracing which allows engineers to trace and track the use of a given instance of a class within the program to be understood. In this paper we present these techniques along with a case study to which we have applied them.