Equational Axiomization of Bicoercibility for Polymorphic Types

Two polymorphic types σ and τ are said to be bicoercible if there is a coercion from σ to τ and conversely. We give a complete equational axiomatization of bicoercible types and prove that the relation of bicoercibility is decidable.National Science Foundation (CCR-9113196); KBN (2 P301 031 06); ESPRIT BRA7232 GENTZE

On Satisfiability of Nominal Subtyping with Variance

Nominal type systems with variance, the core of the subtyping relation in object-oriented programming languages like Java, C# and Scala, have been extensively studied by Kennedy and Pierce: they have shown the undecidability of the subtyping between ground types and proposed the decidable fragments of such type systems. However, modular verification of object-oriented code may require reasoning about the relations of open types. In this paper, we formalize and investigate the satisfiability problem for nominal subtyping with variance. We define the problem in the context of first-order logic. We show that although the non-expansive ground nominal subtyping with variance is decidable, its satisfiability problem is undecidable. Our proof uses a remarkably small fragment of the type system. In fact, we demonstrate that even for the non-expansive class tables with only nullary and unary covariant and invariant type constructors, the satisfiability of quantifier-free conjunctions of positive subtyping atoms is undecidable. We discuss this result in detail, as well as show one decidable fragment and a scheme for obtaining other decidable fragments

A descriptive type foundation for RDF Schema

This paper provides a type theoretic foundation for descriptive types that appear in Linked Data. Linked Data is data published on the Web according to principles and standards supported by the W3C. Such Linked Data is inherently messy: this is due to the fact that instead of being assigned a strict a priori schema, the schema is inferred a posteriori. Moreover, such a posteriori schema consists of opaque names that guide programmers, without prescribing structure. We employ what we call a descriptive type system for Linked Data. This descriptive type system differs from a traditional type system in that it provides hints or warnings rather than errors and evolves to describe the data while Linked Data is discovered at runtime. We explain how our descriptive type system allows RDF Schema inference mechanisms to be tightly coupled with domain specific scripting languages for Linked Data, enabling interactive feedback to Web developers.MOE (Min. of Education, S’pore)Accepted versio

Subtyping constraints in quasi-lattices

In this report, we show the decidability and NP-completeness of the satisfiability problem for non-structural subtyping constraints in quasi-lattices. This problem, first introduced by Smolka in 1989, is important for the typing of logic and functional languages. The decidability result is obtained by generalizing Trifonov and Smith's algorithm over lattices, to the case of quasi-lattices. Similarly, we extend Pottier's algorithm for computing explicit solutions to the case of quasi-lattices. Finally we evoke some applications of these results to type inference in constraint logic programming and functional programming languages

Adaptive Constraint Solving for Information Flow Analysis

In program analysis, unknown properties for terms are typically represented symbolically as variables. Bound constraints on these variables can then specify multiple optimisation goals for computer programs and nd application in areas such as type theory, security, alias analysis and resource reasoning. Resolution of bound constraints is a problem steeped in graph theory; interdependencies between the variables is represented as a constraint graph. Additionally, constants are introduced into the system as concrete bounds over these variables and constants themselves are ordered over a lattice which is, once again, represented as a graph. Despite graph algorithms being central to bound constraint solving, most approaches to program optimisation that use bound constraint solving have treated their graph theoretic foundations as a black box. Little has been done to investigate the computational costs or design e cient graph algorithms for constraint resolution. Emerging examples of these lattices and bound constraint graphs, particularly from the domain of language-based security, are showing that these graphs and lattices are structurally diverse and could be arbitrarily large. Therefore, there is a pressing need to investigate the graph theoretic foundations of bound constraint solving. In this thesis, we investigate the computational costs of bound constraint solving from a graph theoretic perspective for Information Flow Analysis (IFA); IFA is a sub- eld of language-based security which veri es whether con dentiality and integrity of classified information is preserved as it is manipulated by a program. We present a novel framework based on graph decomposition for solving the (atomic) bound constraint problem for IFA. Our approach enables us to abstract away from connections between individual vertices to those between sets of vertices in both the constraint graph and an accompanying security lattice which defines ordering over constants. Thereby, we are able to achieve significant speedups compared to state-of-the-art graph algorithms applied to bound constraint solving. More importantly, our algorithms are highly adaptive in nature and seamlessly adapt to the structure of the constraint graph and the lattice. The computational costs of our approach is a function of the latent scope of decomposition in the constraint graph and the lattice; therefore, we enjoy the fastest runtime for every point in the structure-spectrum of these graphs and lattices. While the techniques in this dissertation are developed with IFA in mind, they can be extended to other application of the bound constraints problem, such as type inference and program analysis frameworks which use annotated type systems, where constants are ordered over a lattice