APPARATUS FOR AND METHOD OF IMPLEMENTING FEEDBACK DIRECTED DEPENDENCY ANALYSIS OF SOFTWARE APPLICATIONS

A novel and useful mechanism for optimizing the detection of dependencies in a software system via feedback between static and dynamic engines. The present invention enables dynamic analysis to be more effective by using the results of static analysis to identify sections that need to be traced during dynamic analysis. The method also increases the accuracy of static analysis by using dynamic values as inputs to static analysis. Dynamic values used as inputs for static analysis are a result of dynamic analysis. The mechanism first executes a static analysis, then executes a dynamic analysis targeting the sections identified by the static analysis and finally executes a static analysis using the dynamic values identified during the dynamic analysis in order to detect dependencies. The present invention also provides a mechanism to analyze a specific section of a software system by first executing a dynamic analysis targeting the specific section and then executing a static analysis using the dynamic values identified during the dynamic analysis.