[Colloquium] Utsav Sethi MS Presentation/Jun 16, 2023

[Megan Woodward]

This is an announcement of Utsav Sethi's MS Presentation
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Candidate: Utsav Sethi

Date: Friday, June 16, 2023

Time: 12 pm CST

Remote Location:  https://uchicago.zoom.us/j/98302517225?pwd=MkZpQUM3eERrbDBpdGpuSzJUbmplQT09

M.S. Paper Title: Cancellation in Systems: An Empirical Study of Task Cancellation Patterns and Failures

Abstract: Modern software applications rely on the execution and co-ordination of many different kinds of tasks. Often overlooked is the need to sometimes prematurely terminate or cancel a task, either to accommodate a conflicting task, to manage system resources, or in response to system or user events that make the task irrelevant. In this work, we studied 62 cancel-feature requests and 156 cancel-related bugs across 13 popular distributed and concurrent systems written in Java, C#, and Go to understand why task cancel is needed, what are the challenges in implementing task cancel, and how severe are cancel-related failures. Guided by the study, we generalized a few cancel-related anti-patterns and implemented static checkers that found many code snippets matching these anti-patterns in the latest versions of these popular systems. We hope this study will help guide better and more systematic approaches to task cancellation.

Advisors: Shan Lu

Committee Members: Haryadi Gunawi, Madan Musuvathi, and Shan Lu