Logical Specification and Analysis of Fault Tolerant Systems through Partial Model Checking

This paper presents a framework for a logical characterisation of fault tolerance and its formal analysis based on partial model checking techniques. The framework requires a fault tolerant system to be modelled using a formal calculus, here the CCS process algebra. To this aim we propose a uniform modelling scheme in which to specify a formal model of the system, its failing behaviour and possibly its fault-recovering procedures. Once a formal model is provided into our scheme, fault tolerance - with respect to a given property - can be formalized as an equational µ-calculus formula. This formula expresses in a logic formalism, all the fault scenarios satisfying that fault tolerance property. Such a characterisation understands the analysis of fault tolerance as a form of analysis of open systems and thank to partial model checking strategies, it can be made independent on any particular fault assumption. Moreover this logical characterisation makes possible the fault-tolerance verification problem be expressed as a general µ-calculus validation problem, for solving which many theorem proof techniques and tools are available. We present several analysis methods showing the flexibility of our approach

Formalization of Universal Algebra in Agda

In this work we present a novel formalization of universal algebra in Agda. We show that heterogeneous signatures can be elegantly modelled in type-theory using sets indexed by arities to represent operations. We prove elementary results of heterogeneous algebras, including the proof that the term algebra is initial and the proofs of the three isomorphism theorems. We further formalize equational theory and prove soundness and completeness. At the end, we define (derived) signature morphisms, from which we get the contravariant functor between algebras; moreover, we also proved that, under some restrictions, the translation of a theory induces a contra-variant functor between models.Fil: Gunther, Emmanuel. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Matemática, Astronomía y Física; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Gadea, Alejandro Emilio. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Matemática, Astronomía y Física; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Pagano, Miguel Maria. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Matemática, Astronomía y Física; Argentin

Quadtrees as an Abstract Domain

Quadtrees have proved popular in computer graphics and spatial databases as a way of representing regions in two dimensional space. This hierarchical data-structure is flexible enough to support non-convex and even disconnected regions, therefore it is natural to ask whether this datastructure can form the basis of an abstract domain. This paper explores this question and suggests that quadtrees offer a new approach to weakly relational domains whilst their hierarchical structure naturally lends itself to representation with boolean functions

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

Platform Dependent Verification: On Engineering Verification Tools for 21st Century

The paper overviews recent developments in platform-dependent explicit-state LTL model checking.Comment: In Proceedings PDMC 2011, arXiv:1111.006

Exploiting the Hierarchical Structure of Rule-Based Specifications for Decision Planning

Rule-based specifications have been very successful as a declarative approach in many domains, due to the handy yet solid foundations offered by rule-based machineries like term and graph rewriting. Realistic problems, however, call for suitable techniques to guarantee scalability. For instance, many domains exhibit a hierarchical structure that can be exploited conveniently. This is particularly evident for composition associations of models. We propose an explicit representation of such structured models and a methodology that exploits it for the description and analysis of model- and rule-based systems. The approach is presented in the framework of rewriting logic and its efficient implementation in the rewrite engine Maude and is illustrated with a case study.

Process Calculi Abstractions for Biology

Several approaches have been proposed to model biological systems by means of the formal techniques and tools available in computer science. To mention just a few of them, some representations are inspired by Petri Nets theory, and some other by stochastic processes. A most recent approach consists in interpreting the living entities as terms of process calculi where the behavior of the represented systems can be inferred by applying syntax-driven rules. A comprehensive picture of the state of the art of the process calculi approach to biological modeling is still missing. This paper goes in the direction of providing such a picture by presenting a comparative survey of the process calculi that have been used and proposed to describe the behavior of living entities. This is the preliminary version of a paper that was published in Algorithmic Bioprocesses. The original publication is available at http://www.springer.com/computer/foundations/book/978-3-540-88868-

An Observational Theory for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

AbstractWe propose a process calculus to study the observational theory of Mobile Ad Hoc Networks. The operational semantics of our calculus is given both in terms of a Reduction Semantics and in terms of a Labelled Transition Semantics. We prove that the two semantics coincide. The labelled transition system is then used to derive the notions of simulation and bisimulation for ad hoc networks. As a main result, we prove that the (weak) labelled bisimilarity completely characterises (weak) reduction barbed congruence, a standard, branching-time, contextually-defined program equivalence. We then use our (bi)simulation proof methods to formally prove a number of non-trivial properties of ad hoc networks