Research topic
This topic focuses on methods that transform execution traces into analyzable representations such as states, graphs, sequences, profiles, or statistical features. The collection includes trace-based diagnosis, event modeling, anomaly detection, dependency reasoning, and analysis pipelines for large or distributed systems.
Related search terms: execution trace analysis · system trace analysis · trace-based diagnosis
30 papers in this topic, ordered newest first. The detailed paper records contain the evidence-grounded methods, tools, datasets, findings, and citation guidance.
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 · arXiv / CoRR; arXiv page reports acceptance to ICSE 2026
TAAF combines time-indexed knowledge graphs with large language models to turn large execution traces into queryable, actionable explanations.
Keywords: TAAF · TraceQA-100 · time-indexed knowledge graph · natural-language trace queries · multi-hop reasoning
2026 · ACM International Conference on the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE) Companion
TraceSynth generates novel structured kernel-trace windows with a Transformer diffusion model and repairs generated events against invariants mined from real LTTng traces.
Keywords: kernel traces · trace generation · diffusion models · constraint-guided generation · LTTng
2025 · IEEE International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC)
The paper introduces a taxonomy of log-event characteristics that explains why different log parsers fail across systems and parser families.
Keywords: log parsing · log event characteristics · LEC taxonomy · LogHub · Drain
2025 · IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE)
The paper reconstructs missing system-call events in execution traces with diffusion and structured state-space generative models.
Keywords: execution trace reconstruction · trace imputation · diffusion models · DiffWave · SSSDS4
2024 · 2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering: Companion Proceedings (ICSE Companion)
The paper derives a 30-item taxonomy of log event characteristics that induce parsing errors and quantifies the characteristics with the largest impact across eight parsers.
Keywords: log parsing · log event characteristics · LEC taxonomy · LogHub · open coding
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
2023 · IEEE International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC)
The paper classifies recurring log-parsing errors and connects them to token and event characteristics that can guide parser design and logging practice.
Keywords: log parsing · parser errors · Drain · AEL · Spell
2023 · ACM/SPEC ICPE Companion
The paper uses sampled call graphs and machine learning to distinguish warmup from steady-state executions in Java microbenchmarks.
Keywords: Java · JMH · microbenchmarking · steady-state detection · warmup
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
2022 · 30th International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC)
The framework combines critical-path extraction, coarse anomaly checks, OPTICS execution clustering, and MUSCLE multiple sequence alignment to localize performance differences in system-level traces.
Keywords: sequence alignment · MUSCLE · OPTICS · critical path · system-level traces
2022 · Performance Evaluation
The paper unifies Chromium user-space events with Linux kernel scheduling and resource events to analyze execution paths and localize sporadic latency in a complex multithreaded application.
Keywords: multi-thread applications · execution paths · performance evaluation · thread behavior
2021 · International Journal of Parallel Programming
The paper automatically builds an approximate workflow model and adaptive quantitative constraints from user-space and kernel execution traces, reducing manual model construction for real-time and multicore diagnosis.
Keywords: model-based constraints · execution tracing · multi-core systems · real-time applications · constraint generation
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
2021 · Sensors
The paper presents a modular client-server architecture for large-trace storage, analysis, and visualization inside an integrated development environment.
Keywords: distributed architecture · Trace Compass · TraceScape · LTTng 2.10.3 · Trace Analysis Server Protocol
2021 · 2021 IEEE International Symposium on Networks, Computers and Communications (ISNCC)
The paper provides a graphical state-machine modeling tool that generates trace analyses and integrates them into Trace Compass, reducing the need to hand-code state providers or XML analyses.
Keywords: state-machine traces · trace indexing · special-purpose database · Gantt chart · XY view
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
2019 · International Journal of Parallel Programming
The paper partitions Common Trace Format streams into balanced workloads, resolves cross-chunk state dependencies, and parallelizes stateful trace analyses with low synchronization cost.
Keywords: trace analysis · parallelization · analysis scalability · multicore processing · CTF
2017 · Software Quality Journal
The framework lets analysts define stateful trace analyses declaratively, using a generic state model and XML specifications that can drive storage, filtering, and visualization across trace formats.
Keywords: declarative trace analysis · stateful analysis · execution traces · LTTng · ETW
2017 · Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience
The paper designs and evaluates hardware-assisted alternatives to LTTng-UST for software-event and execution-path tracing, including STM/ETB, ETM/ETB, and a modified Perf/BTS path.
Keywords: hardware-assisted tracing · software events · event collection · trace overhead · ARM CoreSight
2016 · IEEE BigData Congress
eSHT redesigns the State History Tree to store and query highly parallel trace intervals more compactly and with shallower trees.
Keywords: Enhanced State History Tree · eSHT · State History Tree · interval data · external-memory indexing
2015 · IEEE BigData Congress
The paper provides a declarative XML/state-machine approach for flexible filtering and synthetic-event generation over large kernel traces.
Keywords: execution trace filtering · LTTng 2.4.0 · Trace Compass · finite-state machine · declarative analysis
2015 · Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience
The paper proposes a multilevel data-cube model for computing statistics over live execution traces across several time scales.
Keywords: data cube · stream cube · live trace statistics · LTTng · State History Tree
2014 · 2014 IEEE 27th Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering (CCECE)
The paper presents multiscale trace navigation that links raw kernel events to system-call, synthetic, and fault/alert abstractions in a zoomable timeline.
Keywords: large trace data · multiscale navigation · zoomable timeline · semantic zoom · physical zoom
2013 · ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review
The framework computes system-parameter statistics for arbitrary intervals and resource hierarchies from very large traces using a disk-resident history structure and controlled granularity.
Keywords: trace statistics · LTTng · Linux kernel 2.6.38.6 · disk-resident interval tree · history tree
2013 · Runtime Verification 2013 (RV 2013)
The paper introduces a disk-backed state-history model that incrementally converts trace events into queryable state intervals, enabling scalable timestamp/state queries and visualization without replaying the entire trace.
Keywords: system states · trace queries · trace visualization · interval data · tree-based storage
2013 · 2013 IEEE 26th Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering (CCECE)
The paper develops a multilevel trace-label placement algorithm that preserves readable, semantically meaningful labels while users zoom and pan across dense execution-trace views.
Keywords: execution trace events · label placement · trace visualization · overlap avoidance · event labels
2013 · IEEE International Conference on Social Computing
The paper presents a disk-oriented State History Tree that stores very large, time-ordered trace intervals without repeated node rebalancing.
Keywords: State History Tree · disk-based interval data · streaming interval data · time-ordered intervals · LTTng
2012 · Advances in Software Engineering
The paper introduces a stateful trace-abstraction method that converts low-level kernel events into semantic and synthetic events using modeled resource state and finite-state patterns.
Keywords: stateful trace abstraction · synthetic events · semantic events · modeled state · finite-state machine
2012 · 16th IASTED International Conference on Software Engineering and Applications (SEA 2012)
The paper introduces a stateful trace-abstraction architecture that shares modeled system state and intermediate computation across concurrent patterns to reduce the cost of analyzing large Linux kernel traces.
Keywords: multi-core tracing · LTTng · Linux kernel 2.6.38.6 · stateful trace analysis · trace abstraction