Z2SAL: a translation-based model checker for Z

Despite being widely known and accepted in industry, the Z formal specification language has not so far been well supported by automated verification tools, mostly because of the challenges in handling the abstraction of the language. In this paper we discuss a novel approach to building a model-checker for Z, which involves implementing a translation from Z into SAL, the input language for the Symbolic Analysis Laboratory, a toolset which includes a number of model-checkers and a simulator. The Z2SAL translation deals with a number of important issues, including: mapping unbounded, abstract specifications into bounded, finite models amenable to a BDD-based symbolic checker; converting a non-constructive and piecemeal style of functional specification into a deterministic, automaton-based style of specification; and supporting the rich set-based vocabulary of the Z mathematical toolkit. This paper discusses progress made towards implementing as complete and faithful a translation as possible, while highlighting certain assumptions, respecting certain limitations and making use of available optimisations. The translation is illustrated throughout with examples; and a complete working example is presented, together with performance data

Translating the Cantor set by a random

We determine the constructive dimension of points in random translates of the Cantor set. The Cantor set "cancels randomness" in the sense that some of its members, when added to Martin-Lof random reals, identify a point with lower constructive dimension than the random itself. In particular, we find the Hausdorff dimension of the set of points in a Cantor set translate with a given constructive dimension

Discounting in LTL

In recent years, there is growing need and interest in formalizing and reasoning about the quality of software and hardware systems. As opposed to traditional verification, where one handles the question of whether a system satisfies, or not, a given specification, reasoning about quality addresses the question of \emph{how well} the system satisfies the specification. One direction in this effort is to refine the "eventually" operators of temporal logic to {\em discounting operators}: the satisfaction value of a specification is a value in $[0,1]$, where the longer it takes to fulfill eventuality requirements, the smaller the satisfaction value is. In this paper we introduce an augmentation by discounting of Linear Temporal Logic (LTL), and study it, as well as its combination with propositional quality operators. We show that one can augment LTL with an arbitrary set of discounting functions, while preserving the decidability of the model-checking problem. Further augmenting the logic with unary propositional quality operators preserves decidability, whereas adding an average-operator makes some problems undecidable. We also discuss the complexity of the problem, as well as various extensions

The complexity of acyclic conjunctive queries revisited

In this paper, we consider first-order logic over unary functions and study the complexity of the evaluation problem for conjunctive queries described by such kind of formulas. A natural notion of query acyclicity for this language is introduced and we study the complexity of a large number of variants or generalizations of acyclic query problems in that context (Boolean or not Boolean, with or without inequalities, comparisons, etc...). Our main results show that all those problems are \textit{fixed-parameter linear} i.e. they can be evaluated in time $f(|Q|).|\textbf{db}|.|Q(\textbf{db})|$ where $|Q|$ is the size of the query $Q$, $|\textbf{db}|$ the database size, $|Q(\textbf{db})|$ is the size of the output and $f$ is some function whose value depends on the specific variant of the query problem (in some cases, $f$ is the identity function). Our results have two kinds of consequences. First, they can be easily translated in the relational (i.e., classical) setting. Previously known bounds for some query problems are improved and new tractable cases are then exhibited. Among others, as an immediate corollary, we improve a result of \~\cite{PapadimitriouY-99} by showing that any (relational) acyclic conjunctive query with inequalities can be evaluated in time $f(|Q|).|\textbf{db}|.|Q(\textbf{db})|$. A second consequence of our method is that it provides a very natural descriptive approach to the complexity of well-known algorithmic problems. A number of examples (such as acyclic subgraph problems, multidimensional matching, etc...) are considered for which new insights of their complexity are given.Comment: 30 page