An assertion language for constraint logic programs

In an advanced program development environment, such as that discussed in the introduction of this book, several tools may coexist which handle both the program and information on the program in different ways. Also, these tools may interact among themselves and with the user. Thus, the different tools and the user need some way to communicate. It is our design principie that such communication be performed in terms of assertions. Assertions are syntactic objects which allow expressing properties of programs. Several assertion languages have been used in the past in different contexts, mainly related to program debugging. In this chapter we propose a general language of assertions which is used in different tools for validation and debugging of constraint logic programs in the context of the DiSCiPl project. The assertion language proposed is parametric w.r.t. the particular constraint domain and properties of interest being used in each different tool. The language proposed is quite general in that it poses few restrictions on the kind of properties which may be expressed. We believe the assertion language we propose is of practical relevance and appropriate for the different uses required in the tools considered

Debugging of Web Applications with Web-TLR

Web-TLR is a Web verification engine that is based on the well-established Rewriting Logic--Maude/LTLR tandem for Web system specification and model-checking. In Web-TLR, Web applications are expressed as rewrite theories that can be formally verified by using the Maude built-in LTLR model-checker. Whenever a property is refuted, a counterexample trace is delivered that reveals an undesired, erroneous navigation sequence. Unfortunately, the analysis (or even the simple inspection) of such counterexamples may be unfeasible because of the size and complexity of the traces under examination. In this paper, we endow Web-TLR with a new Web debugging facility that supports the efficient manipulation of counterexample traces. This facility is based on a backward trace-slicing technique for rewriting logic theories that allows the pieces of information that we are interested to be traced back through inverse rewrite sequences. The slicing process drastically simplifies the computation trace by dropping useless data that do not influence the final result. By using this facility, the Web engineer can focus on the relevant fragments of the failing application, which greatly reduces the manual debugging effort and also decreases the number of iterative verifications.Comment: In Proceedings WWV 2011, arXiv:1108.208

Autonomous Agents in Software Development: A Vision Paper

Large Language Models (LLM) and Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT), are reshaping the field of Software Engineering (SE). They enable innovative methods for executing many software engineering tasks, including automated code generation, debugging, maintenance, etc. However, only a limited number of existing works have thoroughly explored the potential of GPT agents in SE. This vision paper inquires about the role of GPT-based agents in SE. Our vision is to leverage the capabilities of multiple GPT agents to contribute to SE tasks and to propose an initial road map for future work. We argue that multiple GPT agents can perform creative and demanding tasks far beyond coding and debugging. GPT agents can also do project planning, requirements engineering, and software design. These can be done through high-level descriptions given by the human developer. We have shown in our initial experimental analysis for simple software (e.g., Snake Game, Tic-Tac-Toe, Notepad) that multiple GPT agents can produce high-quality code and document it carefully. We argue that it shows a promise of unforeseen efficiency and will dramatically reduce lead-times. To this end, we intend to expand our efforts to understand how we can scale these autonomous capabilities further.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figur