Research topic
This topic collects methods that move from an observed anomaly to a ranked or explained cause. The records cover dependency graphs, spectrum-based localization, critical-path evidence, statistical debugging, profiling, and cross-layer traces for identifying the resources, services, functions, or interactions responsible for a failure or slowdown.
Related search terms: root cause analysis · RCA · performance root-cause localization
19 papers in this topic, ordered newest first. The detailed paper records contain the evidence-grounded methods, tools, datasets, findings, and citation guidance.
2026 · IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
CARE combines distributed traces and profiling metrics with graph- and spectrum-based analysis to localize performance root causes in microservices.
Keywords: distributed traces · profiling metrics · context-aware RCA · microservice diagnosis · TrainTicket
2026 · Journal of Systems and Software
DTraComp is an open-source Eclipse Trace Compass framework that compares groups of distributed requests and attributes span time to user-space, kernel, thread-state, and system-call evidence.
Keywords: DTraComp · distributed trace comparison · OpenTracing · LTTng · LTTng-UST
2026 · Journal of Systems and Software
LMAT combines multi-task language models for kernel-event and event-duration prediction with online change detection, lightweight error-vector root-cause analysis, and adaptive tracing control.
Keywords: adaptive tracing · LTTng · kernel events · system-call sequences · event-duration modeling
2026 · SIGSOFT FSE Companion
The paper reframes performance debugging as collaborative reasoning over multiple evidence-grounded hypotheses rather than optimization for one supposedly best explanation.
Keywords: performance debugging · collaborative reasoning · AgentDebug · Reasoning Surface · hypothesis generation
2025 · IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME)
HybridRCA combines critical-path-aware span analysis with targeted kernel metrics to reduce production trace volume while preserving root-cause localization evidence.
Keywords: critical path · hybrid tracing · production microservices · LTTng · OpenTracing
2024 · ACM/SPEC ICPE Companion
The work-in-progress paper combines service-call graph context, social-network analysis, and spectrum-based fault localization to rank distributed-trace root causes.
Keywords: context-aware RCA · service-call graph · distributed traces · service communities · Louvain
2024 · ACM/SPEC International Conference on Performance Engineering (ICPE) Companion
The paper combines an unsupervised GraphSAGE model with critical-path-specific latency profiles to detect anomalous requests and rank likely microservice culprits without labelled training data.
Keywords: latency culprit ranking · distributed traces · GraphSAGE · graph neural networks · critical path
2024 · 2024 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering: New Ideas and Emerging Results (ICSE-NIER)
The paper proposes an adaptive tracing loop that combines language-model prediction of kernel-event sequences and event durations with change detection and root-cause analysis, so detailed tracing is activated only around significant behavior shifts.
Keywords: adaptive tracing · LTTng · kernel events · system-call sequences · event-duration modeling
2023 · IEEE International Conference on Big Data
AltOOM combines early memory-pressure forecasting with selective process-level profiling to identify the process most responsible for an impending out-of-memory event.
Keywords: out-of-memory · OOM diagnosis · data-driven RCA · resource analysis · memory pressure forecasting
2023 · IEEE Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation (SCAM)
PASD uses Linux kernel-event traces, Perf call stacks, and statistical debugging to rank functions associated with performance problems without application-source instrumentation.
Keywords: statistical debugging · Linux kernel tracepoints · Perf · perf record · call stacks
2022 · Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience
The paper combines model-based quantitative constraints with user-space and kernel execution traces to automatically identify likely causes of real-time and multicore constraint violations.
Keywords: model-based constraints · execution tracing · user-space traces · kernel traces · LTTng
2021 · IEEE International Conference on Software Quality, Reliability and Security (QRS)
The paper combines system-level dependency graphs with automated outlier detection to localize likely causes of latency anomalies.
Keywords: latency outliers · system-level traces · dependency graphs · density-based models · z-score
2021 · Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing
The paper correlates LTTng traces from user space through kernel, storage, network, and multiple hosts in a disk-backed state model, enabling top-down diagnosis of distributed request latency.
Keywords: distributed requests · multilevel trace analysis · LTTng · Apache · PHP
2020 · IEEE 20th International Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation (SCAM)
DepGraph uses system-level tracing to expose the waiting dependencies that divide a task's execution time across threads and hardware resources.
Keywords: waiting dependency graph · system-level tracing · blocking dependencies · performance bottlenecks · thread-resource interactions
2020 · IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering Workshops (ISSREW)
The paper extends critical-path analysis across kernel and user-space lock events so contention from futexes, spinlocks, semaphores, and other synchronization mechanisms can be diagnosed without recompiling the application.
Keywords: lock contention · multi-level execution traces · LTTng 2.10 · Trace Compass 4 · LD_PRELOAD
2019 · IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering Workshops (ISSREW)
The paper presents a tracing and analysis pipeline that detects slow web requests and groups them by internal execution behavior to expose likely causes.
Keywords: web requests · user-space tracing · kernel-space tracing · outlier detection · behavior clustering
2019 · Journal of Systems Architecture
The paper redesigns GDB dynamic tracing around LTTng-UST and scalable trace views so multi-threaded CPU/GPU debugging remains usable on heterogeneous many-core systems.
Keywords: heterogeneous systems · dynamic tracing · large-scale debugging · debugging efficiency · GDB
2018 · IEEE Systems Conference
The paper correlates PHP user-space events with LTTng kernel events in a unified multilevel model to explain high-latency web requests.
Keywords: high latency · dynamic analysis · multilevel analysis · latency causes · LTTng
2012 · International Journal of Computer Science and Network Security
This survey organizes intrusion-response systems around automation, response cost, decision evaluation, adjustment, execution, attack paths, and risk assessment.
Keywords: intrusion response systems · response cost · automated response · NIDS · HIDS