Two Decades of Maude

This paper is a tribute to José Meseguer, from the rest of us in the Maude team, reviewing the past, the present, and the future of the language and system with which we have been working for around two decades under his leadership. After reviewing the origins and the language's main features, we present the latest additions to the language and some features currently under development. This paper is not an introduction to Maude, and some familiarity with it and with rewriting logic are indeed assumed.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Automated verification of refinement laws

Demonic refinement algebras are variants of Kleene algebras. Introduced by von Wright as a light-weight variant of the refinement calculus, their intended semantics are positively disjunctive predicate transformers, and their calculus is entirely within first-order equational logic. So, for the first time, off-the-shelf automated theorem proving (ATP) becomes available for refinement proofs. We used ATP to verify a toolkit of basic refinement laws. Based on this toolkit, we then verified two classical complex refinement laws for action systems by ATP: a data refinement law and Back's atomicity refinement law. We also present a refinement law for infinite loops that has been discovered through automated analysis. Our proof experiments not only demonstrate that refinement can effectively be automated, they also compare eleven different ATP systems and suggest that program verification with variants of Kleene algebras yields interesting theorem proving benchmarks. Finally, we apply hypothesis learning techniques that seem indispensable for automating more complex proofs

New results on rewrite-based satisfiability procedures

Program analysis and verification require decision procedures to reason on theories of data structures. Many problems can be reduced to the satisfiability of sets of ground literals in theory T. If a sound and complete inference system for first-order logic is guaranteed to terminate on T-satisfiability problems, any theorem-proving strategy with that system and a fair search plan is a T-satisfiability procedure. We prove termination of a rewrite-based first-order engine on the theories of records, integer offsets, integer offsets modulo and lists. We give a modularity theorem stating sufficient conditions for termination on a combinations of theories, given termination on each. The above theories, as well as others, satisfy these conditions. We introduce several sets of benchmarks on these theories and their combinations, including both parametric synthetic benchmarks to test scalability, and real-world problems to test performances on huge sets of literals. We compare the rewrite-based theorem prover E with the validity checkers CVC and CVC Lite. Contrary to the folklore that a general-purpose prover cannot compete with reasoners with built-in theories, the experiments are overall favorable to the theorem prover, showing that not only the rewriting approach is elegant and conceptually simple, but has important practical implications.Comment: To appear in the ACM Transactions on Computational Logic, 49 page

A resolution principle for clauses with constraints

We introduce a general scheme for handling clauses whose variables are constrained by an underlying constraint theory. In general, constraints can be seen as quantifier restrictions as they filter out the values that can be assigned to the variables of a clause (or an arbitrary formulae with restricted universal or existential quantifier) in any of the models of the constraint theory. We present a resolution principle for clauses with constraints, where unification is replaced by testing constraints for satisfiability over the constraint theory. We show that this constrained resolution is sound and complete in that a set of clauses with constraints is unsatisfiable over the constraint theory if we can deduce a constrained empty clause for each model of the constraint theory, such that the empty clauses constraint is satisfiable in that model. We show also that we cannot require a better result in general, but we discuss certain tractable cases, where we need at most finitely many such empty clauses or even better only one of them as it is known in classical resolution, sorted resolution or resolution with theory unification

Theorem proving with built-in hybrid theories

A growing number of applications of automated reasoning exhibits the necessity of flexible deduction systems. A deduction system should be able to execute inference rules which are appropriate to the given problem. One way to achieve this behavior is the integration of different calculi. This led to so called hybrid reasoning [22, 1, 10, 20] which means the integration of a general purpose foreground reasoner with a specialized background reasoner. A typical task of a background reasoner is to perform special purpose inference rules according to a built-in theory. The aim of this paper is to go a step further, i.e. to treat the background reasoner as a hybrid system itself. The paper formulates sufficient criteria for the construction of complete calculi which enable reasoning under hybrid theories combined from sub-theories. For this purpose we use a generic approach described in [20]. This more detailed view on built-in theories is not covered by the known general approaches [1, 3, 6, 20] for building in theories into theorem provers. The approach is demonstrated by its application to the target calculi of the algebraic translation [9] of multi-modal and extended multi-modal [7] logic to first-order logic

Rule-based Methodologies for the Specification and Analysis of Complex Computing Systems

Desde los orígenes del hardware y el software hasta la época actual, la complejidad de los sistemas de cálculo ha supuesto un problema al cual informáticos, ingenieros y programadores han tenido que enfrentarse. Como resultado de este esfuerzo han surgido y madurado importantes áreas de investigación. En esta disertación abordamos algunas de las líneas de investigación actuales relacionada con el análisis y la verificación de sistemas de computación complejos utilizando métodos formales y lenguajes de dominio específico. En esta tesis nos centramos en los sistemas distribuidos, con un especial interés por los sistemas Web y los sistemas biológicos. La primera parte de la tesis está dedicada a aspectos de seguridad y técnicas relacionadas, concretamente la certificación del software. En primer lugar estudiamos sistemas de control de acceso a recursos y proponemos un lenguaje para especificar políticas de control de acceso que están fuertemente asociadas a bases de conocimiento y que proporcionan una descripción sensible a la semántica de los recursos o elementos a los que se accede. También hemos desarrollado un marco novedoso de trabajo para la Code-Carrying Theory, una metodología para la certificación del software cuyo objetivo es asegurar el envío seguro de código en un entorno distribuido. Nuestro marco de trabajo está basado en un sistema de transformación de teorías de reescritura mediante operaciones de plegado/desplegado. La segunda parte de esta tesis se concentra en el análisis y la verificación de sistemas Web y sistemas biológicos. Proponemos un lenguaje para el filtrado de información que permite la recuperación de informaciones en grandes almacenes de datos. Dicho lenguaje utiliza información semántica obtenida a partir de ontologías remotas para re nar el proceso de filtrado. También estudiamos métodos de validación para comprobar la consistencia de contenidos web con respecto a propiedades sintácticas y semánticas. Otra de nuestras contribuciones es la propuesta de un lenguaje que permite definir y comprobar automáticamente restricciones semánticas y sintácticas en el contenido estático de un sistema Web. Finalmente, también consideramos los sistemas biológicos y nos centramos en un formalismo basado en lógica de reescritura para el modelado y el análisis de aspectos cuantitativos de los procesos biológicos. Para evaluar la efectividad de todas las metodologías propuestas, hemos prestado especial atención al desarrollo de prototipos que se han implementado utilizando lenguajes basados en reglas.Baggi ., M. (2010). Rule-based Methodologies for the Specification and Analysis of Complex Computing Systems [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/8964Palanci

Constrained narrowing for conditional equational theories modulo axioms

For an unconditional equational theory (Sigma, E) whose oriented equations (E) over arrow are confluent and terminating, narrowing provides an E-unification algorithm. This has been generalized by various authors in two directions: (i) by considering unconditional equational theories (Sigma, E boolean OR B) where the (E) over arrow are confluent, terminating and coherent modulo axioms B, and (ii) by considering conditional equational theories. Narrowing for a conditional theory (Sigma, E boolean OR B) has also been studied, but much less and with various restrictions. In this paper we extend these prior results by allowing conditional equations with extra variables in their conditions, provided the corresponding rewrite rules (E) over arrow are confluent, strictly coherent, operationally terminating modulo B and satisfy a natural determinism condition allowing incremental computation of matching substitutions for their extra variables. We also generalize the type structure of the types and operations in Sigma to be order-sorted. The narrowing method we propose, called constrained narrowing, treats conditions as constraints whose solution is postponed. This can greatly reduce the search space of narrowing and allows notions such as constrained variant and constrained unifier that can cover symbolically possibly infinite sets of actual variants and unifiers. It also supports a hierarchical method of solving constraints. We give an inference system for hierarchical constrained narrowing modulo B and prove its soundness and completeness. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.We thank the anonymous referees for their constructive criticism and their very detailed and helpful suggestions for improving an earlier version of this work. We also thank Luis Aguirre for kindly giving us additional suggestions to improve the text. This work has been partially supported by NSF Grant CNS 13-19109 and by the EU (FEDER) and the Spanish MINECO under grant TIN 2013-45732-C4-1-P, and by Generalitat Valenciana PROMETEOII/2015/013.Cholewa, A.; Escobar Román, S.; Meseguer, J. (2015). Constrained narrowing for conditional equational theories modulo axioms. Science of Computer Programming. 112:24-57. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scico.2015.06.001S245711