05431 Abstracts Collection -- Deduction and Applications

From 23.10.05 to 28.10.05, the Dagstuhl Seminar 05431 ``Deduction and Applications\u27\u27 was held in the International Conference and Research Center (IBFI), Schloss Dagstuhl. During the seminar, several participants presented their current research, and ongoing work and open problems were discussed. Abstracts of the presentations given during the seminar as well as abstracts of seminar results and ideas are put together in this paper. The first section describes the seminar topics and goals in general. Links to extended abstracts or full papers are provided, if available

On conflict-driven reasoning

Automated formal methods and automated reasoning are interconnected, as formal methods generate reasoning problems and incorporate reasoning techniques. For example, formal methods tools employ reasoning engines to find solutions of sets of constraints, or proofs of conjectures. From a reasoning perspective, the expressivity of the logical language is often directly proportional to the difficulty of the problem. In propositional logic, Conflict-Driven Clause Learning (CDCL) is one of the key features of state-of-the-art satisfiability solvers. The idea is to restrict inferences to those needed to explain conflicts, and use conflicts to prune a backtracking search. A current research direction in automated reasoning is to generalize this notion of conflict-driven satisfiability to a paradigm of conflict-driven reasoning in first-order theories for satisfiability modulo theories and assignments, and even in full first-order logic for generic automated theorem proving. While this is a promising and exciting lead, it also poses formidable challenges

Disproving in First-Order Logic with Definitions, Arithmetic and Finite Domains

This thesis explores several methods which enable a first-order reasoner to conclude satisfiability of a formula modulo an arithmetic theory. The most general method requires restricting certain quantifiers to range over finite sets; such assumptions are common in the software verification setting. In addition, the use of first-order reasoning allows for an implicit representation of those finite sets, which can avoid scalability problems that affect other quantified reasoning methods. These new techniques form a useful complement to existing methods that are primarily aimed at proving validity. The Superposition calculus for hierarchic theory combinations provides a basis for reasoning modulo theories in a first-order setting. The recent account of ‘weak abstraction’ and related improvements make an mplementation of the calculus practical. Also, for several logical theories of interest Superposition is an effective decision procedure for the quantifier free fragment. The first contribution is an implementation of that calculus (Beagle), including an optimized implementation of Cooper’s algorithm for quantifier elimination in the theory of linear integer arithmetic. This includes a novel means of extracting values for quantified variables in satisfiable integer problems. Beagle won an efficiency award at CADE Automated theorem prover System Competition (CASC)-J7, and won the arithmetic non-theorem category at CASC-25. This implementation is the start point for solving the ‘disproving with theories’ problem. Some hypotheses can be disproved by showing that, together with axioms the hypothesis is unsatisfiable. Often this is relative to other axioms that enrich a base theory by defining new functions. In that case, the disproof is contingent on the satisfiability of the enrichment. Satisfiability in this context is undecidable. Instead, general characterizations of definition formulas, which do not alter the satisfiability status of the main axioms, are given. These general criteria apply to recursive definitions, definitions over lists, and to arrays. This allows proving some non-theorems which are otherwise intractable, and justifies similar disproofs of non-linear arithmetic formulas. When the hypothesis is contingently true, disproof requires proving existence of a model. If the Superposition calculus saturates a clause set, then a model exists, but only when the clause set satisfies a completeness criterion. This requires each instance of an uninterpreted, theory-sorted term to have a definition in terms of theory symbols. The second contribution is a procedure that creates such definitions, given that a subset of quantifiers range over finite sets. Definitions are produced in a counter-example driven way via a sequence of over and under approximations to the clause set. Two descriptions of the method are given: the first uses the component solver modularly, but has an inefficient counter-example heuristic. The second is more general, correcting many of the inefficiencies of the first, yet it requires tracking clauses through a proof. This latter method is shown to apply also to lists and to problems with unbounded quantifiers. Together, these tools give new ways for applying successful first-order reasoning methods to problems involving interpreted theories

An SMT-based verification framework for software systems handling arrays

Recent advances in the areas of automated reasoning and first-order theorem proving paved the way to the developing of effective tools for the rigorous formal analysis of computer systems. Nowadays many formal verification frameworks are built over highly engineered tools (SMT-solvers) implementing decision procedures for quantifier- free fragments of theories of interest for (dis)proving properties of software or hardware products. The goal of this thesis is to go beyond the quantifier-free case and enable sound and effective solutions for the analysis of software systems requiring the usage of quantifiers. This is the case, for example, of software systems handling array variables, since meaningful properties about arrays (e.g., "the array is sorted") can be expressed only by exploiting quantification. The first contribution of this thesis is the definition of a new Lazy Abstraction with Interpolants framework in which arrays can be handled in a natural manner. We identify a fragment of the theory of arrays admitting quantifier-free interpolation and provide an effective quantifier-free interpolation algorithm. The combination of this result with an important preprocessing technique allows the generation of the required quantified formulae. Second, we prove that accelerations, i.e., transitive closures, of an interesting class of relations over arrays are definable in the theory of arrays via Exists-Forall-first order formulae. We further show that the theoretical importance of this result has a practical relevance: Once the (problematic) nested quantifiers are suitably handled, acceleration offers a precise (not over-approximated) alternative to abstraction solutions. Third, we present new decision procedures for quantified fragments of the theories of arrays. Our decision procedures are fully declarative, parametric in the theories describing the structure of the indexes and the elements of the arrays and orthogonal with respect to known results. Fourth, by leveraging our new results on acceleration and decision procedures, we show that the problem of checking the safety of an important class of programs with arrays is fully decidable. The thesis presents along with theoretical results practical engineering strategies for the effective implementation of a framework combining the aforementioned results: The declarative nature of our contributions allows for the definition of an integrated framework able to effectively check the safety of programs handling array variables while overcoming the individual limitations of the presented techniques

Renforcement du noyau d un démonstrateur SMT (Conception et implantation de procédures de décisions efficaces)

Cette thèse s'intéresse à la démonstration automatique de la validité de formules mathématiques issues de la preuve de programmes. Elle se focalise tout particulièrement sur la Satisfiabilité Modulo Théories (SMT): un jeune domaine de recherche qui a connu de grands progrès durant la dernière décennie. Les démonstrateurs de cette famille ont des applications diverses dans la conception de microprocesseurs, la preuve de programmes, le model-checking, etc.Les démonstrateurs SMT offrent un bon compromis entre l'expressivité et l'efficacité. Ils reposent sur une coopération étroite d'un solveur SAT avec une combinaison de procédures de décision pour des théories spécifiques comme la théorie de l'égalité libre avec des symboles non interprétés, l'arithmétique linéaire sur les entiers et les rationnels, et la théorie des tableaux.L'objectif de cette thèse est d'améliorer l'efficacité et l'expressivité du démonstrateur SMT Alt-Ergo. Pour cela, nous proposons une nouvelle procédure de décision pour la théorie de l'arithmétique linéaire sur les entiers. Cette procédure est inspirée par la méthode de Fourier-Motzkin, mais elle utilise un simplexe sur les rationnels pour effectuer les calculs en pratique. Nous proposons également un nouveau mécanisme de combinaison, capable de raisonner dans l'union de la théorie de l'égalité libre, la théorie AC des symboles associatifs et commutatifs et une théorie arbitraire deShostak. Ce mécanisme est une extension modulaire et non intrusive de la procédure de completion close modulo AC avec la théorie de Shostak. Aussi, nous avons étendu Alt-Ergo avec des procédures de décision existantes pour y intégrer d'autres théories intéressantes comme la théorie de types de données énumérés et la théorie des tableaux. Enfin, nous avons exploré des techniques de simplification de formules en amont et l'amélioration de son solveur SAT.This thesis tackles the problem of automatically proving the validity of mathematical formulas generated by program verification tools. In particular, it focuses on Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT): a young research topic that has seen great advances during the last decade. The solvers of this family have various applications in hardware design, program verification, model checking, etc.SMT solvers offer a good compromise between expressiveness and efficiency. They rely on a tight cooperation between a SAT solver and a combination of decision procedures for specific theories, such as the free theory of equality with uninterpreted symbols, linear arithmetic over integers and rationals, or the theory of arrays.This thesis aims at improving the efficiency and the expressiveness of the Alt-Ergo SMT solver. For that, we designed a new decision procedure for the theory of linear integer arithmetic. This procedure is inspired by Fourier-Motzkin's method, but it uses a rational simplex to perform computations in practice. We have also designed a new combination framework, capable of reasoning in the union of the free theory of equality, the AC theory of associative and commutativesymbols, and an arbitrary signature-disjoint Shostak theory. This framework is a modular and non-intrusive extension of the ground AC completion procedure with the given Shostak theory. In addition, we have extended Alt-Ergo with existing decision procedures to integrate additional interesting theories, such as the theory of enumerated data types and the theory of arrays. Finally, we have explored preprocessing techniques for formulas simplification as well as the enhancement of Alt-Ergo's SAT solver.PARIS11-SCD-Bib. électronique (914719901) / SudocSudocFranceF