15,290 research outputs found
On the Path-Width of Integer Linear Programming
We consider the feasibility problem of integer linear programming (ILP). We
show that solutions of any ILP instance can be naturally represented by an
FO-definable class of graphs. For each solution there may be many graphs
representing it. However, one of these graphs is of path-width at most 2n,
where n is the number of variables in the instance. Since FO is decidable on
graphs of bounded path- width, we obtain an alternative decidability result for
ILP. The technique we use underlines a common principle to prove decidability
which has previously been employed for automata with auxiliary storage. We also
show how this new result links to automata theory and program verification.Comment: In Proceedings GandALF 2014, arXiv:1408.556
A Short Counterexample Property for Safety and Liveness Verification of Fault-tolerant Distributed Algorithms
Distributed algorithms have many mission-critical applications ranging from
embedded systems and replicated databases to cloud computing. Due to
asynchronous communication, process faults, or network failures, these
algorithms are difficult to design and verify. Many algorithms achieve fault
tolerance by using threshold guards that, for instance, ensure that a process
waits until it has received an acknowledgment from a majority of its peers.
Consequently, domain-specific languages for fault-tolerant distributed systems
offer language support for threshold guards.
We introduce an automated method for model checking of safety and liveness of
threshold-guarded distributed algorithms in systems where the number of
processes and the fraction of faulty processes are parameters. Our method is
based on a short counterexample property: if a distributed algorithm violates a
temporal specification (in a fragment of LTL), then there is a counterexample
whose length is bounded and independent of the parameters. We prove this
property by (i) characterizing executions depending on the structure of the
temporal formula, and (ii) using commutativity of transitions to accelerate and
shorten executions. We extended the ByMC toolset (Byzantine Model Checker) with
our technique, and verified liveness and safety of 10 prominent fault-tolerant
distributed algorithms, most of which were out of reach for existing
techniques.Comment: 16 pages, 11 pages appendi
Benchmarks for Parity Games (extended version)
We propose a benchmark suite for parity games that includes all benchmarks
that have been used in the literature, and make it available online. We give an
overview of the parity games, including a description of how they have been
generated. We also describe structural properties of parity games, and using
these properties we show that our benchmarks are representative. With this work
we provide a starting point for further experimentation with parity games.Comment: The corresponding tool and benchmarks are available from
https://github.com/jkeiren/paritygame-generator. This is an extended version
of the paper that has been accepted for FSEN 201
Symbolic Algorithms for Qualitative Analysis of Markov Decision Processes with B\"uchi Objectives
We consider Markov decision processes (MDPs) with \omega-regular
specifications given as parity objectives. We consider the problem of computing
the set of almost-sure winning states from where the objective can be ensured
with probability 1. The algorithms for the computation of the almost-sure
winning set for parity objectives iteratively use the solutions for the
almost-sure winning set for B\"uchi objectives (a special case of parity
objectives). Our contributions are as follows: First, we present the first
subquadratic symbolic algorithm to compute the almost-sure winning set for MDPs
with B\"uchi objectives; our algorithm takes O(n \sqrt{m}) symbolic steps as
compared to the previous known algorithm that takes O(n^2) symbolic steps,
where is the number of states and is the number of edges of the MDP. In
practice MDPs have constant out-degree, and then our symbolic algorithm takes
O(n \sqrt{n}) symbolic steps, as compared to the previous known
symbolic steps algorithm. Second, we present a new algorithm, namely win-lose
algorithm, with the following two properties: (a) the algorithm iteratively
computes subsets of the almost-sure winning set and its complement, as compared
to all previous algorithms that discover the almost-sure winning set upon
termination; and (b) requires O(n \sqrt{K}) symbolic steps, where K is the
maximal number of edges of strongly connected components (scc's) of the MDP.
The win-lose algorithm requires symbolic computation of scc's. Third, we
improve the algorithm for symbolic scc computation; the previous known
algorithm takes linear symbolic steps, and our new algorithm improves the
constants associated with the linear number of steps. In the worst case the
previous known algorithm takes 5n symbolic steps, whereas our new algorithm
takes 4n symbolic steps
Fast Search for Dynamic Multi-Relational Graphs
Acting on time-critical events by processing ever growing social media or
news streams is a major technical challenge. Many of these data sources can be
modeled as multi-relational graphs. Continuous queries or techniques to search
for rare events that typically arise in monitoring applications have been
studied extensively for relational databases. This work is dedicated to answer
the question that emerges naturally: how can we efficiently execute a
continuous query on a dynamic graph? This paper presents an exact subgraph
search algorithm that exploits the temporal characteristics of representative
queries for online news or social media monitoring. The algorithm is based on a
novel data structure called the Subgraph Join Tree (SJ-Tree) that leverages the
structural and semantic characteristics of the underlying multi-relational
graph. The paper concludes with extensive experimentation on several real-world
datasets that demonstrates the validity of this approach.Comment: SIGMOD Workshop on Dynamic Networks Management and Mining (DyNetMM),
201
Polynomial-Time Space-Optimal Silent Self-Stabilizing Minimum-Degree Spanning Tree Construction
Motivated by applications to sensor networks, as well as to many other areas,
this paper studies the construction of minimum-degree spanning trees. We
consider the classical node-register state model, with a weakly fair scheduler,
and we present a space-optimal \emph{silent} self-stabilizing construction of
minimum-degree spanning trees in this model. Computing a spanning tree with
minimum degree is NP-hard. Therefore, we actually focus on constructing a
spanning tree whose degree is within one from the optimal. Our algorithm uses
registers on bits, converges in a polynomial number of rounds, and
performs polynomial-time computation at each node. Specifically, the algorithm
constructs and stabilizes on a special class of spanning trees, with degree at
most . Indeed, we prove that, unless NP coNP, there are no
proof-labeling schemes involving polynomial-time computation at each node for
the whole family of spanning trees with degree at most . Up to our
knowledge, this is the first example of the design of a compact silent
self-stabilizing algorithm constructing, and stabilizing on a subset of optimal
solutions to a natural problem for which there are no time-efficient
proof-labeling schemes. On our way to design our algorithm, we establish a set
of independent results that may have interest on their own. In particular, we
describe a new space-optimal silent self-stabilizing spanning tree
construction, stabilizing on \emph{any} spanning tree, in rounds, and
using just \emph{one} additional bit compared to the size of the labels used to
certify trees. We also design a silent loop-free self-stabilizing algorithm for
transforming a tree into another tree. Last but not least, we provide a silent
self-stabilizing algorithm for computing and certifying the labels of a
NCA-labeling scheme
Verifying Recursive Active Documents with Positive Data Tree Rewriting
This paper proposes a data tree-rewriting framework for modeling evolving
documents. The framework is close to Guarded Active XML, a platform used for
handling XML repositories evolving through web services. We focus on automatic
verification of properties of evolving documents that can contain data from an
infinite domain. We establish the boundaries of decidability, and show that
verification of a {\em positive} fragment that can handle recursive service
calls is decidable. We also consider bounded model-checking in our data
tree-rewriting framework and show that it is \nexptime-complete
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