Bug finding tools can find defects in software source code using an automated static analysis. This automation may be able to reduce the time spent for other testing and review activities. For this we need to have a clear understanding of how the defects found by bug finding tools relate to the defects found by other techniques. This paper describes a case study using several projects mainly from an industrial environment that were used to analyse the interrelationships. The main finding is that the bug finding tools predominantly find different defects than testing but a subset of defects found by reviews. However, the types that can be detected are analysed more thoroughly. Therefore, a combination is most advisable if the high number of false positives of the tools can be tolerated.
@cite_13: Type-based analysis is an approach to static analysis of programs that has been studied for more than a decade. A type-based analysis assumes that the program type checks, and the analysis takes advantage of that. This paper examines the state of the art of type-based analysis, and it surveys some of the many software tools that use type-based analysis. Most of the surveyed tools use types as discriminators, while most of the theoretical studies use type and effect systems. We conclude that type-based analysis is a promising approach to achieving both provable correctness and good performance with a reasonable effort.
Palsberg describes in @cite_13 some bug finding tools that use type-based analysis. He shows that they are able to detect race conditions or memory leaks in programs.