Burst force, backtracking, cause elimination are strategies in art of debugging - Maintaining the System

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• tabaiwa   -Posted on 27 May 19
  I would like to say lm so grateful for the above article it really helped me to understand my debugging strategies. However I would really appreciate it if you added more content and examples for better understanding. Overly I would say your article is very useful once again l say thank you very much....
• Manjula Agrahari   -Posted on 10 Nov 17
  Process of backtracking method through figure
• Nirja Shah   -Posted on 23 Oct 15
  Debugging Strategies
  - The object of debugging is to find and correct the cause of a software error
  - There are bugs found by a combination of systematic evaluation, intuition, and luck
  - These debugging methods and tools are not a substitute for careful evaluation based on a complete design model and clear source code
  - There are three main debugging strategies:
  
  Brute force
  - This is the most commonly used and least efficient method
  - It is used when all of it fails
  - It involves the use of memory dumps, run-time traces, and output statements
  - Many a times it leads to wasted effort and time
  
  Backtracking
  - It can be used successfully in small programs
  - This method starts at the location where a symptom has been uncovered
  - In this the source code is then traced backward (manually) until the location of the cause is found
  - In large programs, the number of potential backward paths may become unmanageably large
  
  Cause elimination
  - This involves the use of induction or deduction and introduces the concept of binary partitioning
  - Induction (specific to general): Prove that a specific starting value is true; then prove the general case is true
  - Deduction (general to specific): Show that a specific conclusion follows from a set of general premises
  - The data related to the error occurrence are organized to isolate potential causes
  - A cause hypothesis is devised, and the aforementioned data are used to prove or disprove the hypothesis
  - Alternatively, a list of all possible causes is developed, and tests are conducted to eliminate each cause
  - If initial tests indicate that a particular cause hypothesis shows promise, data are refined in an attempt to isolate the bug

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