AsmetaF: A Flattener for the ASMETA Framework

Abstract State Machines (ASMs) have shown to be a suitable high-level specification method for complex, even industrial, systems; the ASMETA framework, supporting several validation and verification activities on ASM models, is an example of a formal integrated development environment. Although ASMs allow modeling complex systems in a rather concise way -and this is advantageous for specification purposes-, such concise notation is in general a problem for verification activities as model checking and theorem proving that rely on tools accepting simpler notations. In this paper, we propose a flattener tool integrated in the ASMETA framework that transforms a general ASM model in a flattened model constituted only of update, parallel, and conditional rules; such model is easier to map to notations of verification tools. Experiments show the effect of applying the tool to some representative case studies of the ASMETA repository.Comment: In Proceedings F-IDE 2018, arXiv:1811.09014. The first two authors are supported by ERATO HASUO Metamathematics for Systems Design Project (No. JPMJER1603), JST. Funding Reference number: 10.13039/501100009024 ERAT

Integrating formal methods into medical software development : the ASM approach

Medical devices are safety-critical systems since their malfunctions can seriously compromise human safety. Correct operation of a medical device depends upon the controlling software, whose development should adhere to certification standards. However, these standards provide general descriptions of common software engineering activities without any indication regarding particular methods and techniques to assure safety and reliability. This paper discusses how to integrate the use of a formal approach into the current normative for the medical software development. The rigorous process is based on the Abstract State Machine (ASM) formal method, its refinement principle, and model analysis approaches the method supports. The hemodialysis machine case study is used to show how the ASM-based design process covers most of the engineering activities required by the related standards, and provides rigorous approaches for medical software validation and verification

SMT-based automatic proof of ASM model refinement

Model refinement is a technique indispensable for modeling large and complex systems. Many formal specification methods share this concept which usually comes together with the definition of refinement correctness, i.e., the mathematical proof of a logical relation between an abstract model and its refined models. Model refinement is one of the main concepts which the Abstract State Machine (ASM) formal method is built on. Proofs of correct model refinement are usually performed manually, which reduces the usability of the ASM model refinement approach. An automatic support to assist the developer in proving refinement correctness along the chain of refinement steps could be of extreme importance to improve, in practice, the adoption of ASMs. In this paper, we present how the integration between the ASMs and Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT) can be used to automatically prove correctness of model refinement for the ASM method

Software Engineering and Formal Methods [electronic resource] : 14th International Conference, SEFM 2016, Held as Part of STAF 2016, Vienna, Austria, July 4-8, 2016, Proceedings /

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Software Engineering and Formal Methods, SEFM 2016, held as part of STAF 2016, in Vienna, Austria, in July 2016. The 20 full and 5 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 88 submissions. They were organized in topical sections named: concurrency and non-interference; program analysis; model checking; verification; interaction and adaptation; and development methods.Invited Papers -- Abstractions, Semantic Models and Analysis Tools for Concurrent Systems: Progress and Open Problems -- Satisfiability Checking: Theory and Applications -- Concurrency and Non-Interference -- Automatic Derivation of Platform Noninterference Properties -- Linearizability and Causality -- Refinement-based verification of Communicating Unstructured Code -- Guided Dynamic Symbolic Execution Using Subgraph Control-Flow Information (short paper) -- Program Analysis -- Correlating Structured Inputs and Outputs in Functional Specifications -- Combining Predicate Abstraction with Fixpoint Approximations -- Finding Boundary Elements in Ordered Sets with Application to Safety and Requirements Analysis -- Combining Abstract Interpretation with Symbolic Execution for a Static Value Range Analysis of Block Diagrams -- Model Checking -- Program Generation using Simulated Annealing and Model Checking -- LTL Parameter Synthesis of Parametric Timed Automata -- Model checking simulation rules for linearizability -- LTL Model Checking under Fairness in ProB (short paper) -- Verification -- Counterexamples from Proof Failures in SPARK -- Proving Termination of Programs with Bitvector Arithmetic by Symbolic Execution -- SMT-based automatic proof of ASM model refinement -- Coq Implementation of OO Verification Framework VeriJ (short paper) -- Towards a Proof Framework for Information Systems with Weak Consistency (short paper) -- Interaction and Adaptation -- A Cognitive Framework based on Rewriting Logic for the Analysis of Interactive Systems -- Incentive Stackelberg Mean-payoff Games -- Stability-based Adaptation of Asynchronously Communicating Software -- Compliance Checking in the Open Payments Ecosystem (short paper) -- Development Methods -- CoCoSpec: A mode aware contract language -- Modularizing Crosscutting Concerns in Component-Based Systems -- Tightening a Contract Refinement -- BMotionWeb: A Tool for Rapid Creation of Formal Prototypes.This book constitutes the proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Software Engineering and Formal Methods, SEFM 2016, held as part of STAF 2016, in Vienna, Austria, in July 2016. The 20 full and 5 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 88 submissions. They were organized in topical sections named: concurrency and non-interference; program analysis; model checking; verification; interaction and adaptation; and development methods