Loupe: Verifying Publish-Subscribe Architectures with a Magnifying Lens

CONE

Towards a Formal Verification Methodology for Collective Robotic Systems

We introduce a UML-based notation for graphically modeling systems’ security aspects in a simple and intuitive way and a model-driven process that transforms graphical specifications of access control policies in XACML. These XACML policies are then translated in FACPL, a policy language with a formal semantics, and the resulting policies are evaluated by means of a Java-based software tool

Modelling and analyzing adaptive self-assembling strategies with Maude

Building adaptive systems with predictable emergent behavior is a challenging task and it is becoming a critical need. The research community has accepted the challenge by introducing approaches of various nature: from software architectures, to programming paradigms, to analysis techniques. We recently proposed a conceptual framework for adaptation centered around the role of control data. In this paper we show that it can be naturally realized in a reflective logical language like Maude by using the Reflective Russian Dolls model. Moreover, we exploit this model to specify, validate and analyse a prominent example of adaptive system: robot swarms equipped with self-assembly strategies. The analysis exploits the statistical model checker PVeStA

A Logical Verification Methodology for Service-Oriented Computing

We introduce a logical verification methodology for checking behavioural properties of service-oriented computing systems. Service properties are described by means of SocL, a branching-time temporal logic that we have specifically designed to express in an effective way distinctive aspects of services, such as, e.g., acceptance of a request, provision of a response, and correlation among service requests and responses. Our approach allows service properties to be expressed in such a way that they can be independent of service domains and specifications. We show an instantiation of our general methodology that uses the formal language COWS to conveniently specify services and the expressly developed software tool CMC to assist the user in the task of verifying SocL formulae over service specifications. We demonstrate feasibility and effectiveness of our methodology by means of the specification and the analysis of a case study in the automotive domain

Model checking programmable router configurations

Programmable networks offer the ability to customize router behaviour at run time, thus increasing flexibility of network administration. Programmable network routers are configured using domain-specific languages. In this paper, we describe our approach to defining the syntax and semantics of such a domain-specific language. The ability to evolve router programs dynamically creates potential for misconfigurations. By exploiting domain-specific abstractions, we are able to translate router configurations into Promela and validate them using the Spin model checker, thus providing reasoning support for our domain-specific language. To evaluate our approach we use our configuration language to express the IETF's Differentiated Services specification and show that industrial-sized DiffServ router configurations can be validated using Spin on a standard PC. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

NLSC: Unrestricted Natural Language-based Service Composition through Sentence Embeddings

Current approaches for service composition (assemblies of atomic services) require developers to use: (a) domain-specific semantics to formalize services that restrict the vocabulary for their descriptions, and (b) translation mechanisms for service retrieval to convert unstructured user requests to strongly-typed semantic representations. In our work, we argue that effort to developing service descriptions, request translations, and matching mechanisms could be reduced using unrestricted natural language; allowing both: (1) end-users to intuitively express their needs using natural language, and (2) service developers to develop services without relying on syntactic/semantic description languages. Although there are some natural language-based service composition approaches, they restrict service retrieval to syntactic/semantic matching. With recent developments in Machine learning and Natural Language Processing, we motivate the use of Sentence Embeddings by leveraging richer semantic representations of sentences for service description, matching and retrieval. Experimental results show that service composition development effort may be reduced by more than 44\% while keeping a high precision/recall when matching high-level user requests with low-level service method invocations.Comment: This paper will appear on SCC'19 (IEEE International Conference on Services Computing) on July 1

RTL2RTL Formal Equivalence: Boosting the Design Confidence

Increasing design complexity driven by feature and performance requirements and the Time to Market (TTM) constraints force a faster design and validation closure. This in turn enforces novel ways of identifying and debugging behavioral inconsistencies early in the design cycle. Addition of incremental features and timing fixes may alter the legacy design behavior and would inadvertently result in undesirable bugs. The most common method of verifying the correctness of the changed design is to run a dynamic regression test suite before and after the intended changes and compare the results, a method which is not exhaustive. Modern Formal Verification (FV) techniques involving new methods of proving Sequential Hardware Equivalence enabled a new set of solutions for the given problem, with complete coverage guarantee. Formal Equivalence can be applied for proving functional integrity after design changes resulting from a wide variety of reasons, ranging from simple pipeline optimizations to complex logic redistributions. We present here our experience of successfully applying the RTL to RTL (RTL2RTL) Formal Verification across a wide spectrum of problems on a Graphics design. The RTL2RTL FV enabled checking the design sanity in a very short time, thus enabling faster and safer design churn. The techniques presented in this paper are applicable to any complex hardware design.Comment: In Proceedings FSFMA 2014, arXiv:1407.195