LLMParser: An Exploratory Study on Using Large Language Models for Log Parsing

Logs are important in modern software development with runtime information. Log parsing is the first step in many log-based analyses, that involve extracting structured information from unstructured log data. Traditional log parsers face challenges in accurately parsing logs due to the diversity of log formats, which directly impacts the performance of downstream log-analysis tasks. In this paper, we explore the potential of using Large Language Models (LLMs) for log parsing and propose LLMParser, an LLM-based log parser based on generative LLMs and few-shot tuning. We leverage four LLMs, Flan-T5-small, Flan-T5-base, LLaMA-7B, and ChatGLM-6B in LLMParsers. Our evaluation of 16 open-source systems shows that LLMParser achieves statistically significantly higher parsing accuracy than state-of-the-art parsers (a 96% average parsing accuracy). We further conduct a comprehensive empirical analysis on the effect of training size, model size, and pre-training LLM on log parsing accuracy. We find that smaller LLMs may be more effective than more complex LLMs; for instance where Flan-T5-base achieves comparable results as LLaMA-7B with a shorter inference time. We also find that using LLMs pre-trained using logs from other systems does not always improve parsing accuracy. While using pre-trained Flan-T5-base shows an improvement in accuracy, pre-trained LLaMA results in a decrease (decrease by almost 55% in group accuracy). In short, our study provides empirical evidence for using LLMs for log parsing and highlights the limitations and future research direction of LLM-based log parsers.

When LLM-based Code Generation Meets the Software Development Process

Software process models play a pivotal role in fostering collaboration and communication within software teams, enabling them to tackle intricate development tasks effectively. This paper introduces LCG, a code generation framework inspired by established software engineering practices. LCG leverages multiple Large Language Model (LLM) agents to emulate various software process models, namely LCGWaterfall, LCGTDD, and LCGScrum. Each model assigns LLM agents specific roles such as requirement engineer, architect, developer, tester, and scrum master, mirroring typical development activities and communication patterns. Through collaborative efforts utilizing chain-of-thought and prompt composition techniques, the agents continuously refine themselves to enhance code quality. Utilizing GPT3.5 as the underlying LLM and baseline (GPT), we evaluate LCG across four code generation benchmarks: HumanEval, HumanEval-ET, MBPP, and MBPP-ET. Results indicate LCGScrum outperforms other models, achieving Pass@1 scores of 75.2, 65.5, 82.5, and 56.7 in HumanEval, HumanEval-ET, MBPP, and MBPP-ET, respectively - an average 15% improvement over GPT. Analysis reveals distinct impacts of development activities on generated code, with design and code reviews contributing to enhanced exception handling, while design, testing, and code reviews mitigate code smells. Furthermore, temperature values exhibit negligible influence on Pass@1 across all models. However, variations in Pass@1 are notable for different GPT3.5 model versions, ranging from 5 to over 60 in HumanEval, highlighting the stability of LCG across model versions. This stability underscores the importance of adopting software process models to bolster the quality and consistency of LLM-generated code.