3,275 research outputs found
Trustworthy Refactoring via Decomposition and Schemes: A Complex Case Study
Widely used complex code refactoring tools lack a solid reasoning about the
correctness of the transformations they implement, whilst interest in proven
correct refactoring is ever increasing as only formal verification can provide
true confidence in applying tool-automated refactoring to industrial-scale
code. By using our strategic rewriting based refactoring specification
language, we present the decomposition of a complex transformation into smaller
steps that can be expressed as instances of refactoring schemes, then we
demonstrate the semi-automatic formal verification of the components based on a
theoretical understanding of the semantics of the programming language. The
extensible and verifiable refactoring definitions can be executed in our
interpreter built on top of a static analyser framework.Comment: In Proceedings VPT 2017, arXiv:1708.0688
Collaborative Verification-Driven Engineering of Hybrid Systems
Hybrid systems with both discrete and continuous dynamics are an important
model for real-world cyber-physical systems. The key challenge is to ensure
their correct functioning w.r.t. safety requirements. Promising techniques to
ensure safety seem to be model-driven engineering to develop hybrid systems in
a well-defined and traceable manner, and formal verification to prove their
correctness. Their combination forms the vision of verification-driven
engineering. Often, hybrid systems are rather complex in that they require
expertise from many domains (e.g., robotics, control systems, computer science,
software engineering, and mechanical engineering). Moreover, despite the
remarkable progress in automating formal verification of hybrid systems, the
construction of proofs of complex systems often requires nontrivial human
guidance, since hybrid systems verification tools solve undecidable problems.
It is, thus, not uncommon for development and verification teams to consist of
many players with diverse expertise. This paper introduces a
verification-driven engineering toolset that extends our previous work on
hybrid and arithmetic verification with tools for (i) graphical (UML) and
textual modeling of hybrid systems, (ii) exchanging and comparing models and
proofs, and (iii) managing verification tasks. This toolset makes it easier to
tackle large-scale verification tasks
Verification of Model Transformations
With the increasing use of automatic transformations of models, the correctness of these transformations becomes an increasingly important issue. Especially for model transformation generally defined using abstract description techniques like graph transformations or declarative relational specifications, however, establishing the soundness of those transformations by test-based approaches is not straight-forward. We show how formal verification of soundness conditions over such declarative relational style transformations can be performed using an interactive theorem prover. The relational style allows a direct translation of transformations as well as associated soundness conditions into corresponding axioms and theorems. Using the Isabelle theorem prover, the approach is demonstrated for a refactoring transformation and a connectedness soundness condition
Invertible Program Restructurings for Continuing Modular Maintenance
When one chooses a main axis of structural decompostion for a software, such
as function- or data-oriented decompositions, the other axes become secondary,
which can be harmful when one of these secondary axes becomes of main
importance. This is called the tyranny of the dominant decomposition. In the
context of modular extension, this problem is known as the Expression Problem
and has found many solutions, but few solutions have been proposed in a larger
context of modular maintenance. We solve the tyranny of the dominant
decomposition in maintenance with invertible program transformations. We
illustrate this on the typical Expression Problem example. We also report our
experiments with Java and Haskell programs and discuss the open problems with
our approach.Comment: 6 pages, Early Research Achievements Track; 16th European Conference
on Software Maintenance and Reengineering (CSMR 2012), Szeged : Hungary
(2012
Search based software engineering: Trends, techniques and applications
© ACM, 2012. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version is available from the link below.In the past five years there has been a dramatic increase in work on Search-Based Software Engineering (SBSE), an approach to Software Engineering (SE) in which Search-Based Optimization (SBO) algorithms are used to address problems in SE. SBSE has been applied to problems throughout the SE lifecycle, from requirements and project planning to maintenance and reengineering. The approach is attractive because it offers a suite of adaptive automated and semiautomated solutions in situations typified by large complex problem spaces with multiple competing and conflicting objectives.
This article provides a review and classification of literature on SBSE. The work identifies research trends and relationships between the techniques applied and the applications to which they have been applied and highlights gaps in the literature and avenues for further research.EPSRC and E
Detecting and Refactoring Operational Smells within the Domain Name System
The Domain Name System (DNS) is one of the most important components of the
Internet infrastructure. DNS relies on a delegation-based architecture, where
resolution of names to their IP addresses requires resolving the names of the
servers responsible for those names. The recursive structures of the inter
dependencies that exist between name servers associated with each zone are
called dependency graphs. System administrators' operational decisions have far
reaching effects on the DNSs qualities. They need to be soundly made to create
a balance between the availability, security and resilience of the system. We
utilize dependency graphs to identify, detect and catalogue operational bad
smells. Our method deals with smells on a high-level of abstraction using a
consistent taxonomy and reusable vocabulary, defined by a DNS Operational
Model. The method will be used to build a diagnostic advisory tool that will
detect configuration changes that might decrease the robustness or security
posture of domain names before they become into production.Comment: In Proceedings GaM 2015, arXiv:1504.0244
- …