AUTOMATED SCALABLE AND ADAPTIVE SYSTEM FOR MEMORY ANALYSIS VIA IDENTIFICATION OF LEAK ROOT CANDIDATES

A method for identifying a set of objects in a target application program includes: receiving a plurality of samples of one or more object reference graphs, wherein each object reference graph includes live objects and their references; deriving a set of candidate data structures from the samples; collecting a plurality of properties of each of the live objects in relation to data structures over time; and using a mixture model, combining the plurality of the properties of each live object in a non-linear manner for ranking leak root candidates within each set of candidate data structures The method also includes the identification of an initial set of highly-ranked candidate objects that are possible causes of at least one object leak, wherein the higher the ranking the smaller the identified set.