The Effects of Static Analysis for Dynamic Software Updating: An Exploratory Study

Dynamic software updating (DSU) is the act of modifying software without stopping its execution. DSU is employed to preserve the high availability in the deployed software systems. Although significant investigations have been conducted on static analysis (SA) to determine DSU errors, no particular study exists that explores the effects of SA for dynamic software updating. The objective of the study presented in this paper is to explore the effects of static analysis for DSU. In this exploration, four evaluation metrics were declared including the number of update operations, the number of violations, the cyclomatic complexity, and the patch size. Also, a novel framework was introduced and 18 versions of baseline target programs were employed to explore the effects of static analysis for DSU. The results have explained that static analysis can detect violations of DSU. It may affect the complexity of the new versions of the target programs and having optimization can further reduce those violations. In addition, the results show that the SA may change the number of update operations and the patch size for DSU. Overall, the results have proved that SA for dynamic software updating could affect the complexity of the target programs, the number of update operations, and the patch size. Furthermore, this exploration has offered a novel framework and four evaluation metrics for measuring the effects of static analysis for DSU.