TY - CHAP A1 - Ramsauer, Ralf A1 - Lohmann, Daniel A1 - Mauerer, Wolfgang T1 - The List is the Process: Reliable Pre-Integration Tracking of Commits on Mailing Lists T2 - 2019 IEEE/ACM 41st International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), 25-31 May 2019, Montreal, QC, Canada N2 - A considerable corpus of research on software evolution focuses on mining changes in software repositories, but omits their pre-integration history. We present a novel method for tracking this otherwise invisible evolution of software changes on mailing lists by connecting all early revisions of changes to their final version in repositories. Since artefact modifications on mailing lists are communicated by updates to fragments (i.e., patches) only, identifying semantically similar changes is a non-trivial task that our approach solves in a language-independent way. We evaluate our method on high-profile open source software (OSS) projects like the Linux kernel, and validate its high accuracy using an elaborately created ground truth. Our approach can be used to quantify properties of OSS development processes, which is an essential requirement for using OSS in reliable or safety-critical industrial products, where certifiability and conformance to processes are crucial. The high accuracy of our technique allows, to the best of our knowledge, for the first time to quantitatively determine if an open development process effectively aligns with given formal process requirements. KW - commits KW - Data mining KW - Electronic mail KW - Linux KW - mailing lists KW - mining software repositories KW - Open source software KW - patches KW - Software engineering KW - Software maintenance KW - Software reliability Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSE.2019.00088 SP - 807 EP - 818 PB - IEEE ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Mauerer, Wolfgang A1 - Ramsauer, Ralf A1 - Lucas, Edson R. F. A1 - Scherzinger, Stefanie T1 - Silentium! Run-Analyse-Eradicate the Noise out of the DB/OS Stack T2 - Datenbanksysteme für Business, Technologie und Web (BTW 2021): 13.-17. September 2021, Dresden, Deutschland N2 - When multiple tenants compete for resources, database performance tends to suffer. Yet there are scenarios where guaranteed sub-millisecond latencies are crucial, such as in real-time data processing, IoT devices, or when operating in safety-critical environments. In this paper, we study how to make query latencies deterministic in the face of noise (whether caused by other tenants or unrelated operating system tasks). We perform controlled experiments with an in-memory database engine in a multi-tenant setting, where we successively eradicate noisy interference from within the system software stack, to the point where the engine runs close to bare-metal on the underlying hardware. We show that we can achieve query latencies comparable to the database engine running as the sole tenant, but without noticeably impacting the workload of competing tenants. We discuss these results in the context of ongoing efforts to build custom operating systems for database workloads, and point out that for certain use cases, the margin for improvement is rather narrow. In fact, for scenarios like ours, existing operating systems might just be good enough, provided that they are expertly configured. We then critically discuss these findings in the light of a broader family of database systems (e.g., including disk-based), and how to extend the approach of this paper accordingly. Low-latency databases; tail latency; real-time databases; bounded-time query processing; DB-OS co-engineering KW - bounded-time query processing KW - DB-OS co-engineering KW - Low-latency databases KW - real-time databases KW - tail latency Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.18420/btw2021-21 SP - 397 EP - 421 PB - Gesellschaft für Informatik ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Fruth, Michael A1 - Scherzinger, Stefanie A1 - Mauerer, Wolfgang A1 - Ramsauer, Ralf ED - Nambiar, Raghunath ED - Poess, Meikel T1 - Tell-Tale Tail Latencies: Pitfalls and Perils in Database Benchmarking T2 - Performance evaluation and benchmarking, 13th TPC Technology Conference (TPCTC 2021): Copenhagen, Denmark, August 20, 2021, Revised Selected Papers N2 - The performance of database systems is usually characterised by their average-case (i.e., throughput) behaviour in standardised or de-facto standard benchmarks like TPC-X or YCSB. While tails of the latency (i.e., response time) distribution receive considerably less attention, they have been identified as a threat to the overall system performance: In large-scale systems, even a fraction of requests delayed can build up into delays perceivable by end users. To eradicate large tail latencies from database systems, the ability to faithfully record them, and likewise pinpoint them to the root causes, is imminently required. In this paper, we address the challenge of measuring tail latencies using standard benchmarks, and identify subtle perils and pitfalls. In particular, we demonstrate how Java-based benchmarking approaches can substantially distort tail latency observations, and discuss how the discovery of such problems is inhibited by the common focus on throughput performance. We make a case for purposefully re-designing database benchmarking harnesses based on these observations to arrive at faithful characterisations of database performance from multiple important angles. KW - Benchmark harness KW - Database benchmarks KW - Tail latencies Y1 - 2022 SN - 9783030944377 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94437-7_8 SP - 119 EP - 134 PB - Springer CY - Cham, Switzerland ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Ramsauer, Ralf A1 - Kiszka, Jan A1 - Mauerer, Wolfgang ED - Keil, Sophia ED - Lasch, Rainer ED - Lindner, Fabian ED - Lohmer, Jacob T1 - A Novel Software Architecture for Mixed Criticality Systems T2 - Digital Transformation in Semiconductor Manufacturing: Proceedings of the 1st and 2nd European Advances in Digital Transformation Conference, EADTC 2018, Zittau, Germany and EADTC 2019, Milan, Italy N2 - The advent of multi-core CPUs in nearly all embedded markets has prompted an architectural trend towards combining safety critical and uncritical software on single hardware units. We present a novel architecture for mixed criticality systems based on Linux that allows us to consolidate critical and uncritical parts onto a single hardware unit. CPU virtualisation extensions enable strict and static partitioning of hardware by direct assignment of resources, which allows us to boot additional operating systems or bare metal applications running aside Linux. The hypervisor Jailhouse is at the core of the architecture and ensures that the resulting domains may serve workloads of different criticality and can not interfere in an unintended way. This retains Linux’s feature-richness in uncritical parts, while frugal safety and real-time critical applications execute in isolated domains. Architectural simplicity is a central aspect of our approach and a precondition for reliable implementability and successful certification. While standard virtualisation extensions provided by current hardware seem to suffice for a straight forward implementation of our approach, there are a number of further limitations that need to be worked around. This paper discusses the arising issues, and evaluates the suitability of our approach for real-world safety and real-time critical scenarios. Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48602-0_11 SP - 121 EP - 128 PB - Springer International Publishing CY - Cham ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Ramsauer, Ralf A1 - Kiszka, Jan A1 - Lohmann, Daniel A1 - Mauerer, Wolfgang T1 - Look Mum, no VM Exits! (Almost) T2 - Proceedings of the 13th Annual Workshop on Operating Systems Platforms for Embedded Real-Time Applications (OSPERT '17) N2 - Multi-core CPUs are a standard component in many modern embedded systems. Their virtualisation extensions enable the isolation of services, and gain popularity to implement mixed-criticality or otherwise split systems. We present Jailhouse, a Linux-based, OS-agnostic partitioning hypervisor that uses novel architectural approaches to combine Linux, a powerful general-purpose system, with strictly isolated special-purpose components. Our design goals favour simplicity over features, establish a minimal code base, and minimise hypervisor activity. Direct assignment of hardware to guests, together with a deferred initialisation scheme, offloads any complex hardware handling and bootstrapping issues from the hypervisor to the general purpose OS. The hypervisor establishes isolated domains that directly access physical resources without the need for emulation or paravirtualisation. This retains, with negligible system overhead, Linux's feature-richness in uncritical parts, while frugal safety and real-time critical workloads execute in isolated, safe domains. KW - FOS: Computer and information sciences KW - Operating Systems (cs.OS) Y1 - 2017 UR - https://ospert2017.uni.lu/ U6 - https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1705.06932 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Picha, Petr A1 - Brada, Premek A1 - Ramsauer, Ralf A1 - Mauerer, Wolfgang T1 - Towards Architect’s Activity Detection through a Common Model for Project Pattern Analysis T2 - First International Workshop on the Social and Organization Dimensions of Software, 5-7 April 2017, Gothenburg, Sweden N2 - Software development projects leave a large amount of data in repositories of Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) tools. These data contain detailed histories of their respective projects, their results and decisions made along the way. Analysis of such data helps uncover various interesting facts about projects, e.g. their socio-technical structures and the actual (vs. purported) roles of team members. Based on experiences with tools supporting our research we are convinced that it is feasible to consolidate data from different ALM tools, tapping into the situation common in real-life projects. In this paper we report on our work towards a shared common data model and tool integration aimed at improved project analysis. We discuss how this can help in the identification of architects in the project organizational structures, their activity patterns and collaboration with other team roles. KW - data analysis KW - Data Models KW - project management KW - Software Architecture KW - software tools KW - team working Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSAW.2017.46 SP - 175 EP - 178 PB - IEEE ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Ramsauer, Ralf A1 - Lohmann, Daniel A1 - Mauerer, Wolfgang ED - Wassermann, Tony T1 - Observing Custom Software Modifications: A Quantitative Approach of Tracking the Evolution of Patch Stacks T2 - Proceedings of the 12th International Symposium on Open Collaboration (OpenSym '16) N2 - Modifications to open-source software (OSS) are often provided in the form of "patch stacks" -- sets of changes (patches) that modify a given body of source code. Maintaining patch stacks over extended periods of time is problematic when the underlying base project changes frequently. This necessitates a continuous and engineering-intensive adaptation of the stack. Nonetheless, long-term maintenance is an important problem for changes that are not integrated into projects, for instance when they are controversial or only of value to a limited group of users. We present and implement a methodology to systematically examine the temporal evolution of patch stacks, track non-functional properties like integrability and maintainability, and estimate the eventual economic and engineering effort required to successfully develop and maintain patch stacks. Our results provide a basis for quantitative research on patch stacks, including statistical analyses and other methods that lead to actionable advice on the construction and long-term maintenance of custom extensions to OSS. KW - CADOS KW - collaboration KW - Linux KW - maintenance KW - patch stacks Y1 - 2016 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1145/2957792.2957810 SP - 1 EP - 4 PB - ACM CY - New York ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Ramsauer, Ralf A1 - Bulwahn, Lukas A1 - Lohmann, Daniel A1 - Mauerer, Wolfgang ED - Zhang, Yinqian ED - Sion, Radu T1 - The Sound of Silence : Mining Security Vulnerabilities from Secret Integration Channels in Open-Source Projects T2 - Proceedings of the 2020 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Cloud Computing Security Workshop: 09.11.2020, virtual event N2 - Public development processes are a key characteristic of open source projects. However, fixes for vulnerabilities are usually discussed privately among a small group of trusted maintainers, and integrated without prior public involvement. This is supposed to prevent early disclosure, and cope with embargo and non-disclosure agreement (NDA) rules. While regular development activities leave publicly available traces, fixes for vulnerabilities that bypass the standard process do not. We present a data-mining based approach to detect code fragments that arise from such infringements of the standard process. By systematically mapping public development artefacts to source code repositories, we can exclude regular process activities, and infer irregularities that stem from non-public integration channels. For the Linux kernel, the most crucial component of many systems, we apply our method to a period of seven months before the release of Linux 5.4. We find 29 commits that address 12 vulnerabilities. For these vulnerabilities, our approach provides a temporal advantage of 2 to 179 days to design exploits before public disclosure takes place, and fixes are rolled out. Established responsible disclosure approaches in open development processes are supposed to limit premature visibility of security vulnerabilities. However, our approach shows that, instead, they open additional possibilities to uncover such changes that thwart the very premise. We conclude by discussing implications and partial countermeasures. Y1 - 2020 SN - 9781450380843 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1145/3411495.3421360 SP - 147 EP - 157 PB - ACM CY - New York, NY, USA ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Ramsauer, Ralf A1 - Lohmann, Daniel A1 - Mauerer, Wolfgang T1 - System Software for Manufacturing Systems T2 - Proc. First European Advances in Digital Transformation Conference, (2018) Y1 - 2018 ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Ramsauer, Ralf A1 - Lohmann, Daniel A1 - Mauerer, Wolfgang T1 - Reliable Pre-Integration Tracking of Commits on Mailing Lists T2 - Invited Talk at Safety Summit at Embedded Linux Conference Europe (ELCE18) Y1 - 2018 CY - Edinburgh, Scotland ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Ramsauer, Ralf A1 - Bielmeier, Benno A1 - Mauerer, Wolfgang T1 - Towards Real-World System-Level Integration of Quantum Accelerators: A Hardware/Software Co-Design Approach T2 - INFORMATIK; Lecture Notes in Informatics (LNI); GI Quantum Computing Workshop. Potsdam. 16.–19. September 2025 N2 - This work-in-progress explores architectural and systemic foundations for integrating quantum accelerators into heterogeneous computing environments. We propose and implement a modular architecture where Quantum Processing Units (QPUs) operate as peripheral devices, supporting pulse-level control interfaces and high-level circuit execution offloading, while internally managing compilation, transpilation, and scheduling. To enable efficient quantum-classical orchestration, we introduce a Quantum Abstraction Layer (QAL) at the operating system level to enable seamless communication, resource management, and integration with existing software frameworks. Our two-step design approach begins with validating the architecture through simulations in virtualised environments. We then implement an FPGA-based surrogate supporting both result- and timing-accurate modes, enabling full-stack emulation and performance evaluation in the absence of physical quantum hardware. This platform supports extensible and rapid prototyping, Hardware/Software Co-Design, and allows for investigations on the practical quantum advantage under realistic system-level constraints of various use cases. We aim for applicability by hardware vendors, facilitating early development even before physical quantum processors are available. Y1 - 2025 U6 - https://doi.org/10.18420/inf2025_158 SP - 1761 EP - 1765 PB - Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. ER - TY - CHAP A1 - Bielmeier, Benno A1 - Ramsauer, Ralf A1 - Yoshida, Takahiro A1 - Mauerer, Wolfgang T1 - From Tracepoints to Timeliness: a Semi-Markov Framework for Predictive Runtime Analysis T2 - IEEE 31th International Conference on Embedded and Real-Time Computing Systems and Applications (RTCSA), 20-22 August 2025, Singapore N2 - Detecting and resolving violations of temporal constraints in real-time systems is both, time-consuming and resource-intensive, particularly in complex software environments. Measurement-based approaches are widely used during development, but often are unable to deliver reliable predictions with limited data. This paper presents a hybrid method for worst-case execution time estimation, combining lightweight runtime tracing with probabilistic modelling. Timestamped system events are used to construct a semi-Markov chain, where transitions represent empirically observed timing between events. Execution duration is interpreted as time-to-absorption in the semi-Markov chain, enabling worst-case execution time estimation with fewer assumptions and reduced overhead. Empirical results from real-time Linux systems indicate that the method captures both regular and extreme timing behaviours accurately, even from short observation periods. The model supports holistic, low-intrusion analysis across system layers and remains interpretable and adaptable for practical use. Y1 - 2025 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1109/RTCSA66114.2025.00021 SP - 114 EP - 125 PB - IEEE ER -