# Quality Properties of Execution Tracing, an Empirical Study
## 4 Results and Discussion
### Consensus with the Literature
#### 4.2.2 Data Coding from the Literature  
Each publication with execution tracing related data was scrutinised; furthermore, the data with regard to any potential quality property of execution tracing were extracted and recorded. Distinction was made in the recording between explicitly and implicitly defined quality properties, i.e., if a quality property directly appeared in the text, e.g., \"accurate\", then it is an explicitly defined property; however, if solely its negative appeared as something to avoid or a wish was articulated in longer text to achieve, then it was considered as an implicitly defined property. In this latter case, the text was recorded and transcribed to a short explicit term which was equivalent to the implicitly described quality property. The final transcribed list of properties were further processed, the similar items were grouped in one clusters, while the dissimilar ones kept separate as also illustrated in Section 4.1. The transcription of the identified publications is presented in Appendix C.2 in Table A4 while clustering is presented in Appendix C.3.  
In summary, the clusters delineate four quality properties based on the literature:  
**Design and Implementation:**: The variable shows how well the execution tracing mechanism is designed and implemented. The relevant quality property candidates from the literature the cluster encompasses are listed in Table A5.
**Accuracy:**: The variable shows how accurate the output of execution tracing is with regard to its content. The relevant quality property candidates from the literature the cluster encompasses are listed in Table A6.
**Performance:**: The variable shows how performant the implementation of the execution tracing mechanism is. The relevant quality property candidates from the literature the cluster encompasses are listed in Table A7.
**Legibility and Interpretation:**: The variable shows how legible the output of execution tracing is and how well it can be interpreted. Thus, this variable illustrates the quality of the appearance of the content of the trace output. The relevant quality property candidates from the literature the cluster encompasses are listed in Table A8.  
The literature identified by the search documented above did not show any empiric research at present that would have dealt with the discovery of the variables on which execution tracing quality depends. Nevertheless, 15 publications could be identified which involve in execution tracing or in a related area such as monitoring or forensic log data analysis. After extracting and data coding the relevant information from these publication with regard to execution tracing, an agreement can be seen between the variables which stem from the literature and the variables synthesised from the output of the focus groups. The variables (1) _accuracy_, (2) _legibility_, (3) _design and implementation_ appear both in the focus groups and in the literature; however, _performance_ rather constitutes a separate variable based on the literature in which this property is more in the scope of interest than in the output of the focus groups. On the other hand, security forms a variable on its own based on the output of the focus groups. Nevertheless, security also appeared in the literature with less emphasis and rather related to cloud infrastructures [101; 102; 103]. For this reason it was data coded as part of the variable _design and implementation_. In summary, the defined variables based on the literature show no contradictions with the variables based on the focus groups. The slight deviations between the two sources may stem form the lack of empiric research in the identified literature on the field. Moreover, not all of the analysed publications involved in execution tracing but in related areas such as cloud data centre monitoring or log forensic analysis.