A user interface specification for a program debugging and measuring environment

A high level of complexity is involved in program dynamics. A number of tools have been developed to assist the programmer in mastering this complexity in the various phases of software development. However, these tools are specifically oriented towards the monitoring of particular aspects of program behaviour. This paper presents the results of a systematic attempt at defining the user interface to an environment for program debugging, program performance evaluation and program structure analysis. This environment can be used to implement many common debugging techniques, and to evaluate important program performance indexes and program structure statistics. It supports both sequential and concurrent block-oriented high-level languages.