Effective Interactive Resolution of Static Analysis Alarms
Channel: Splash Conference 2017
Date: 2017-10-30

Xin Zhang, Radu Grigore, Xujie Si, Mayur Naik
We propose an interactive approach to resolving static analysis alarms. Our approach synergistically combines a sound but imprecise analysis with precise but unsound heuristics, through user interaction. In each iteration, it solves an optimization problem to find a set of questions for the user such that the expected payoff is maximized. We have implemented our approach in a tool, URSA, that enables interactive alarm resolution for any analysis specified in the declarative language Datalog. We demonstrate the effectiveness of URSA on a state-of-the-art static datarace analysis using a suite of 8 Java programs comprising 41-194 KLOC each. URSA is able to eliminate 73.7% of the false alarms per benchmark with an average payoff of 12X per question. Moreover, URSA prioritizes user effort effectively by posing questions that yield higher payoffs earlier.