Certifying cost annotations in compilers

We discuss the problem of building a compiler which can lift in a provably correct way pieces of information on the execution cost of the object code to cost annotations on the source code. To this end, we need a clear and flexible picture of: (i) the meaning of cost annotations, (ii) the method to prove them sound and precise, and (iii) the way such proofs can be composed. We propose a so-called labelling approach to these three questions. As a first step, we examine its application to a toy compiler. This formal study suggests that the labelling approach has good compositionality and scalability properties. In order to provide further evidence for this claim, we report our successful experience in implementing and testing the labelling approach on top of a prototype compiler written in OCAML for (a large fragment of) the C language

Translating UML State Machines to Coloured Petri Nets Using Acceleo: A Report

UML state machines are widely used to specify dynamic systems behaviours. However its semantics is described informally, thus preventing the application of model checking techniques that could guarantee the system safety. In a former work, we proposed a formalisation of non-concurrent UML state machines using coloured Petri nets, so as to allow for formal verification. In this paper, we report our experience to implement this translation in an automated manner using the model-to-text transformation tool Acceleo. Whereas Acceleo provides interesting features that facilitated our translation process, it also suffers from limitations uneasy to overcome.Comment: In Proceedings ESSS 2014, arXiv:1405.055