Linking Specification, Abstraction, and Debugging
Designing and implementing a visual debugger for distributed programs
is a significant challenge. Data about executing programs must be
gathered and collated without unduly modifying the behaviour of the
program under study. The data must be displayed in ways that are
understandable to the user. One aspect of this problem is that human
users are easily overwhelmed by huge amounts of detail, so the debugger
must be capable of providing a variety of displays, ranging from high-
level views of the entire execution to low-level views of primitive
events. If the debugger is to be used interactively, all this must
happen fairly quickly.
This paper discusses the basic theoretical issues involved in the design
of visual debuggers for distributed programs and then describes the
practical issues involved in the implementation of such debuggers,
including a brief description of a prototype implementation.
(The full paper is not available because it is superseded by
the following publication)
Back to the list of Technical Reports.