12,193 research outputs found
Contribution structures
The invisibility of the individuals and groups that gave rise to requirements artifacts has
been identified as a primary reason for the persistence of requirements traceability
problems. This paper presents an approach, based on modelling the dynamic contribution
structures underlying requirements artifacts, which addresses this issue. We show how
these structures can be defined, using information about the agents who have contributed
to artifact production, in conjunction with details of the numerous traceability relations
that hold within and between artifacts themselves. We describe a scheme, derived from
work in sociolinguistics, which can be used to indicate the capacities in which agents
contribute. We then show how this information can be used to infer details about the
social roles and commitments of agents with respect to their various contributions and to
each other. We further propose a categorisation for artifact-based traceability relations
and illustrate how they impinge on the identification and definition of these structures.
Finally, we outline how this approach can be implemented and supported by tools,
explain the means by which requirements change can be accommodated in the
corresponding contribution structures, and demonstrate the potential it provides for
"personnel-based" requirements traceability
A Bi-Directional Refinement Algorithm for the Calculus of (Co)Inductive Constructions
The paper describes the refinement algorithm for the Calculus of
(Co)Inductive Constructions (CIC) implemented in the interactive theorem prover
Matita. The refinement algorithm is in charge of giving a meaning to the terms,
types and proof terms directly written by the user or generated by using
tactics, decision procedures or general automation. The terms are written in an
"external syntax" meant to be user friendly that allows omission of
information, untyped binders and a certain liberal use of user defined
sub-typing. The refiner modifies the terms to obtain related well typed terms
in the internal syntax understood by the kernel of the ITP. In particular, it
acts as a type inference algorithm when all the binders are untyped. The
proposed algorithm is bi-directional: given a term in external syntax and a
type expected for the term, it propagates as much typing information as
possible towards the leaves of the term. Traditional mono-directional
algorithms, instead, proceed in a bottom-up way by inferring the type of a
sub-term and comparing (unifying) it with the type expected by its context only
at the end. We propose some novel bi-directional rules for CIC that are
particularly effective. Among the benefits of bi-directionality we have better
error message reporting and better inference of dependent types. Moreover,
thanks to bi-directionality, the coercion system for sub-typing is more
effective and type inference generates simpler unification problems that are
more likely to be solved by the inherently incomplete higher order unification
algorithms implemented. Finally we introduce in the external syntax the notion
of vector of placeholders that enables to omit at once an arbitrary number of
arguments. Vectors of placeholders allow a trivial implementation of implicit
arguments and greatly simplify the implementation of primitive and simple
tactics
Lean and Full Congruence Formats for Recursion
In this paper I distinguish two (pre)congruence requirements for semantic
equivalences and preorders on processes given as closed terms in a system
description language with a recursion construct. A lean congruence preserves
equivalence when replacing closed subexpressions of a process by equivalent
alternatives. A full congruence moreover allows replacement within a recursive
specification of subexpressions that may contain recursion variables bound
outside of these subexpressions.
I establish that bisimilarity is a lean (pre)congruence for recursion for all
languages with a structural operational semantics in the ntyft/ntyxt format.
Additionally, it is a full congruence for the tyft/tyxt format.Comment: To appear in: Proc. LICS'17, Reykjavik, Iceland, IEE
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