Abstract Parsing and its applications
Abstract parsing is a static string-analysis technique that analyzes the syntax of dynamically generate programs (or semi-structured documents) by incorporating data-flow analysis with LR parsing. The technique is used to validate that a script will always generate grammatically well-structured programs (or documents) at run-time. In this talk, we introduce the abstract-parsing technique and its extension that processes semantic attributes. We then show how the extension can be used to statically validate JSP scripts that generate HTML documents. We also discuss the possibility of applying the technique to the static detection of security vulnerabilities in Web applications and to the static reconstruction of database schema from database applications.
