A program analysis framework for tccp based on abstract interpretation

[EN] The timed concurrent constraint language (tccp) is a timed extension of the concurrent constraint paradigm. tccp was defined to model reactive systems, where infinite behaviors arise naturally. In previous works, a semantic framework and abstract diagnosis method for the language have been defined. On the basis of that semantic framework, this paper proposes an abstract semantics that, together with a widening operator, is suitable for the definition of different analyses for tccp programs. The abstract semantics is correct and can be represented as a finite graph where each node represents a hypothetical (abstract) computational step of the program. The widening operator allows us to guarantee the convergence of the abstract fixpoint computation.This author has been supported by the Andalusian Excellence Project P11-TIC-7659. This work has been partially supported by the EU (FEDER) and the Spanish MINECO under grants TIN 2015-69175-C4-1-R and TIN 2013-45732-C4-1-P and by Generalitat Valenciana PROMETEOII/2015/013Comini, M.; Gallardo, M.; Titolo, L.; Villanueva, A. (2017). A program analysis framework for tccp based on abstract interpretation. Formal Aspects of Computing. 29(3):531-557. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00165-016-0409-8S531557293Alpuente M, Gallardo MM, Pimentel E, Villanueva A (2006) A semantic framework for the abstract model checking of tccp programs. Theor Comput Scie 346(1): 58–95Bagnara R, Hill PM., Ricci E, Zaffanella E (2005) Precise widening operators for convex polyhedra. Sci Comput Program 58(1–2):28–56Cousot P, Cousot R (1977) Abstract interpretation: a unified lattice model for static analysis of programs by construction or approximation of fixpoints. In: Proceedings of the 4th ACM SIGACT-SIGPLAN symposium on principles of programming languages, Los Angeles, California, January 17–19. ACM Press, New York, pp 238–252Clarke EM, Grumberg O, Jha S, Lu Y, Veith H (2000) Counterexample-guided abstraction refinement. In: CAV, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1855. Springer, pp 154–169Comini M, Gallardo MM, Titolo L, Villanueva A (2015) Abstract Analysis of Universal Properties for tccp. In: Falaschi M (ed) Logic-based Program Synthesis and Transformation, 25th International Symposium, LOPSTR 2015. Revised Selected Papers, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 9527. Springer, pp 163–178Comini M, Titolo L, Villanueva A (2011) Abstract diagnosis for timed concurrent constraint programs. Theory Pract Logic Programm 11(4-5):487–502Comini M, Titolo L, Villanueva A (2013) A condensed goal-independent bottom-up fixpoint modeling the behavior of tccp. Technical report, DSIC, Universitat Politècnica de València. http://riunet.upv.es/handle/10251/34328de Boer FS, Gabbrielli M, Meo MC (2000) A timed concurrent constraint language. Inf Comput 161(1): 45–83Falaschi M, Gabbrielli M, Marriott K, Palamidessi C (1993) Compositional analysis for concurrent constraint programming. In: Proceedings of the eighth annual IEEE symposium on logic in computer science, Los Alamitos, CA, USA, IEEE Computer Society Press, pp 210–221Falaschi M, Olarte C, Palamidessi C (2015) Abstract interpretation of temporal concurrent constraint programs. Theory and Pract Logic Program (TPLP) 15(3): 312–357Falaschi M, Villanueva A (2006) Automatic verification of timed concurrent constraint programs. Theory Pract Logic Program 6(3): 265–300Gallardo MM, Merino P, Pimentel E (2002) Refinement of LTL formulas for abstract model checking. In: Static analysis, 9th international symposium, SAS 2002, Madrid, Spain, September 17–20, 2002, Proceedings, pp 395–410Saraswat VA (1993) Concurrent constraint programming. The MIT Press, CambridgeSaraswat VA, Rinard M, Panangaden P (1991) The semantic foundations of concurrent constraint programming. In: Proceedings of the 18th ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on principles of programming languages. ACM, New York, pp 333–352Zaffanella E, Giacobazzi R, Levi G (1997) Abstracting synchronization in concurrent constraint programming. J Funct Logic Program (6

Automatic binding-related error diagnosis in logic programs

This paper proposes a diagnosis algorithm for locating a certain kind of errors in logic programs: variable binding errors that result in abstract symptoms during compile-time checking of assertions based on abstract interpretation. The diagnoser analyzes the graph generated by the abstract interpreter, which is a provably safe approximation of the program semantics. The proposed algorithm traverses this graph to find the point where the actual error originates (a reason of the symptom), leading to the point the error has been reported (the symptom). The procedure is fully automatic, not requiring any interaction with the user. A prototype diagnoser has been implemented and preliminary results are encouraging

Programming with global analysis

Global data-flow analysis of (constraint) logic programs, which is generally based on abstract interpretation [7], is reaching a comparatively high level of maturity. A natural question is whether it is time for its routine incorporation in standard compilers, something which, beyond a few experimental systems, has not happened to date. Such incorporation arguably makes good sense only if: • the range of applications of global analysis is large enough to justify the additional complication in the compiler, and • global analysis technology can deal with all the features of "practical" languages (e.g., the ISO-Prolog built-ins) and "scales up" for large programs. We present a tutorial overview of a number of concepts and techniques directly related to the issues above, with special emphasis on the first one. In particular, we concéntrate on novel uses of global analysis during program development and debugging, rather than on the more traditional application área of program optimization. The idea of using abstract interpretation for validation and diagnosis has been studied in the context of imperative programming [2] and also of logic programming. The latter work includes issues such as using approximations to reduce the burden posed on programmers by declarative debuggers [6, 3] and automatically generating and checking assertions [4, 5] (which includes the more traditional type checking of strongly typed languages, such as Gódel or Mercury [1, 8, 9]) We also review some solutions for scalability including modular analysis, incremental analysis, and widening. Finally, we discuss solutions for dealing with meta-predicates, side-effects, delay declarations, constraints, dynamic predicates, and other such features which may appear in practical languages. In the discussion we will draw both from the literature and from our experience and that of others in the development and use of the CIAO system analyzer. In order to emphasize the practical aspects of the solutions discussed, the presentation of several concepts will be illustrated by examples run on the CIAO system, which makes extensive use of global analysis and assertions

Abstract Analysis of Universal Properties for tccp

[EN] The Timed Concurrent Constraint Language (tccp) is a time extension of the concurrent constraint paradigm of Saraswat. tccp was defined to model reactive systems, where infinite behaviors arise naturally. In previous works, a semantic framework and abstract diagnosis method for the language has been defined. On the basis of that semantic framework, this paper proposes an abstract semantics that, together with a widening operator, is suitable for the definition of different analyses for tccp programs. The abstract semantics is correct and can be represented as a finite graph where each node represents a hypothetical computational step of the program containing approximated information for the variables. The widening operator allows us to guarantee the convergence of the abstract fixpoint computation.This work has been supported by the Andalusian Excellence Project P11-TIC7659. This work has been partially supported by the EU (FEDER) and the Spanish MINECO under grant TIN 2013-45732-C4-1-P (DAMAS) and by Generalitat Valenciana PROMETEOII/2015/013Comini, M.; Gallardo Melgarejo, MDM.; Titolo, L.; Villanueva, A. (2015). Abstract Analysis of Universal Properties for tccp. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. 163-178. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27436-2_10S163178Alpuente, M., Gallardo, M.M., Pimentel, E., Villanueva, A.: A semantic framework for the abstract model checking of tccp programs. Theor. Comput. Sci. 346(1), 58–95 (2005)Bagnara, R., Hill, P.M., Ricci, E., Zaffanella, E.: Precise widening operators for convex polyhedra. Sci Comput. Program. 58(1–2), 28–56 (2005)Comini, M., Titolo, L., Villanueva, A.: Abstract diagnosis for timed concurrent constraint programs. Theor. Pract. Log. Program. 11(4–5), 487–502 (2011)Comini, M., Titolo, L., Villanueva, A.: A condensed goal-independent bottom-up fixpoint modeling the behavior of tccp. Technical report, DSIC, Universitat Politècnica de València (2013). http://riunet.upv.es/handle/10251/34328Cousot, P., Cousot, R.: Abstract Interpretation: a unified lattice model for static analysis of programs by construction or approximation of fixpoints. In: Proceedings of the 4th ACM SIGACT-SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages, Los Angeles, California, January 17–19, pp. 238–252. ACM Press, New York (1977)de Boer, F.S., Gabbrielli, M., Meo, M.C.: A timed concurrent constraint language. Inf. Comput. 161(1), 45–83 (2000)Falaschi, M. Gabbrielli, M., Marriott, K., Palamidessi, C.: Compositional analysis for concurrent constraint programming. In: Proceedings of the Eighth Annual IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science, pp. 210–221. IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos (1993)Falaschi, M., Olarte, C., Palamidessi, C.: Abstract interpretation of temporal concurrent constraint programs. Theor. Pract. Log. Program. (TPLP) 15(3), 312–357 (2015)Falaschi, M., Villanueva, A.: Automatic verification of timed concurrent constraint programs. Theor. Pract. Log. Program. 6(3), 265–300 (2006)Saraswat, V.A.: Concurrent Constraint Programming. The MIT Press, Cambridge (1993)Zaffanella, E., Giacobazzi, R., Levi, G.: Abstracting synchronization in concurrent constraint programming. J. Funct. Log. Program. 6, 1997 (1997

An Abstract Interpretation Framework for Diagnosis and Verification of Timed Concurrent Constraint Languages

In this thesis, we propose a semantic framework for tccp based on abstract interpretation with the main purpose of formally verifying and debugging tccp programs. A key point for the efficacy of the resulting methodologies is the adequacy of the concrete semantics. Thus, in this thesis, much effort has been devoted to the development of a suitable small-step denotational semantics for the tccp language to start with. Our denotational semantics models precisely the small-step behavior of tccp and is suitable to be used within the abstract interpretation framework. Namely, it is defined in a compositional and bottom-up way, it is as condensed as possible (it does not contain redundant elements), and it is goal-independent (its calculus does not depend on the semantic evaluation of a specific initial agent). Another contribution of this thesis is the definition (by abstraction of our small-step denotational semantics) of a big-step denotational semantics that abstracts away from the information about the evolution of the state and keeps only the the first and the last (if it exists) state. We show that this big-step semantics is essentially equivalent to the input-output semantics. In order to fulfill our goal of formally validate tccp programs, we build different approximations of our small-step denotational semantics by using standard abstract interpretation techniques. In this way we obtain debugging and verification tools which are correct by construction. More specifically, we propose two abstract semantics that are used to formally debug tccp programs. The first one approximates the information content of tccp behavioral traces, while the second one approximates our small-step semantics with temporal logic formulas. By applying abstract diagnosis with these abstract semantics we obtain two fully-automatic verification methods for tccp

Towards an Effective Decision Procedure for LTL formulas with Constraints

This paper presents an ongoing work that is part of a more wide-ranging project whose final scope is to define a method to validate LTL formulas w.r.t. a program written in the timed concurrent constraint language tccp, which is a logic concurrent constraint language based on the concurrent constraint paradigm of Saraswat. Some inherent notions to tccp processes are non-determinism, dealing with partial information in states and the monotonic evolution of the information. In order to check an LTL property for a process, our approach is based on the abstract diagnosis technique. The concluding step of this technique needs to check the validity of an LTL formula (with constraints) in an effective way. In this paper, we present a decision method for the validity of temporal logic formulas (with constraints) built by our abstract diagnosis technique.Comment: Part of WLPE 2013 proceedings (arXiv:1308.2055

Abstract verification and debugging of constraint logic programs

The technique of Abstract Interpretation [13] has allowed the development of sophisticated program analyses which are provably correct and practical. The semantic approximations produced by such analyses have been traditionally applied to optimization during program compilation. However, recently, novel and promising applications of semantic approximations have been proposed in the more general context of program verification and debugging [3],[10],[7]

Using global analysis, partial specifications, and an extensible assertion language for program validation and debugging

We discuss a framework for the application of abstract interpretation as an aid during program development, rather than in the more traditional application of program optimization. Program validation and detection of errors is first performed statically by comparing (partial) specifications written in terms of assertions against information obtained from (global) static analysis of the program. The results of this process are expressed in the user assertion language. Assertions (or parts of assertions) which cannot be checked statically are translated into run-time tests. The framework allows the use of assertions to be optional. It also allows using very general properties in assertions, beyond the predefined set understandable by the static analyzer and including properties defined by user programs. We also report briefly on an implementation of the framework. The resulting tool generates and checks assertions for Prolog, CLP(R), and CHIP/CLP(fd) programs, and integrates compile-time and run-time checking in a uniform way. The tool allows using properties such as types, modes, non-failure, determinacy, and computational cost, and can treat modules separately, performing incremental analysis