79,292 research outputs found
Sciduction: Combining Induction, Deduction, and Structure for Verification and Synthesis
Even with impressive advances in automated formal methods, certain problems
in system verification and synthesis remain challenging. Examples include the
verification of quantitative properties of software involving constraints on
timing and energy consumption, and the automatic synthesis of systems from
specifications. The major challenges include environment modeling,
incompleteness in specifications, and the complexity of underlying decision
problems.
This position paper proposes sciduction, an approach to tackle these
challenges by integrating inductive inference, deductive reasoning, and
structure hypotheses. Deductive reasoning, which leads from general rules or
concepts to conclusions about specific problem instances, includes techniques
such as logical inference and constraint solving. Inductive inference, which
generalizes from specific instances to yield a concept, includes algorithmic
learning from examples. Structure hypotheses are used to define the class of
artifacts, such as invariants or program fragments, generated during
verification or synthesis. Sciduction constrains inductive and deductive
reasoning using structure hypotheses, and actively combines inductive and
deductive reasoning: for instance, deductive techniques generate examples for
learning, and inductive reasoning is used to guide the deductive engines.
We illustrate this approach with three applications: (i) timing analysis of
software; (ii) synthesis of loop-free programs, and (iii) controller synthesis
for hybrid systems. Some future applications are also discussed
Functional Requirements-Based Automated Testing for Avionics
We propose and demonstrate a method for the reduction of testing effort in
safety-critical software development using DO-178 guidance. We achieve this
through the application of Bounded Model Checking (BMC) to formal low-level
requirements, in order to generate tests automatically that are good enough to
replace existing labor-intensive test writing procedures while maintaining
independence from implementation artefacts. Given that existing manual
processes are often empirical and subjective, we begin by formally defining a
metric, which extends recognized best practice from code coverage analysis
strategies to generate tests that adequately cover the requirements. We then
formulate the automated test generation procedure and apply its prototype in
case studies with industrial partners. In review, the method developed here is
demonstrated to significantly reduce the human effort for the qualification of
software products under DO-178 guidance
Developing a distributed electronic health-record store for India
The DIGHT project is addressing the problem of building a scalable and highly available information store for the Electronic Health Records (EHRs) of the over one billion citizens of India
OpenJML: Software verification for Java 7 using JML, OpenJDK, and Eclipse
OpenJML is a tool for checking code and specifications of Java programs. We
describe our experience building the tool on the foundation of JML, OpenJDK and
Eclipse, as well as on many advances in specification-based software
verification. The implementation demonstrates the value of integrating
specification tools directly in the software development IDE and in automating
as many tasks as possible. The tool, though still in progress, has now been
used for several college-level courses on software specification and
verification and for small-scale studies on existing Java programs.Comment: In Proceedings F-IDE 2014, arXiv:1404.578
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