Towards Intelligent Databases

This article is a presentation of the objectives and techniques of deductive databases. The deductive approach to databases aims at extending with intensional definitions other database paradigms that describe applications extensionaUy. We first show how constructive specifications can be expressed with deduction rules, and how normative conditions can be defined using integrity constraints. We outline the principles of bottom-up and top-down query answering procedures and present the techniques used for integrity checking. We then argue that it is often desirable to manage with a database system not only database applications, but also specifications of system components. We present such meta-level specifications and discuss their advantages over conventional approaches

Genetic Programming for Smart Phone Personalisation

Personalisation in smart phones requires adaptability to dynamic context based on user mobility, application usage and sensor inputs. Current personalisation approaches, which rely on static logic that is developed a priori, do not provide sufficient adaptability to dynamic and unexpected context. This paper proposes genetic programming (GP), which can evolve program logic in realtime, as an online learning method to deal with the highly dynamic context in smart phone personalisation. We introduce the concept of collaborative smart phone personalisation through the GP Island Model, in order to exploit shared context among co-located phone users and reduce convergence time. We implement these concepts on real smartphones to demonstrate the capability of personalisation through GP and to explore the benefits of the Island Model. Our empirical evaluations on two example applications confirm that the Island Model can reduce convergence time by up to two-thirds over standalone GP personalisation.Comment: 43 pages, 11 figure

The CIAO multiparadigm compiler and system: A progress report

Abstract is not available

Applying Formal Methods to Networking: Theory, Techniques and Applications

Despite its great importance, modern network infrastructure is remarkable for the lack of rigor in its engineering. The Internet which began as a research experiment was never designed to handle the users and applications it hosts today. The lack of formalization of the Internet architecture meant limited abstractions and modularity, especially for the control and management planes, thus requiring for every new need a new protocol built from scratch. This led to an unwieldy ossified Internet architecture resistant to any attempts at formal verification, and an Internet culture where expediency and pragmatism are favored over formal correctness. Fortunately, recent work in the space of clean slate Internet design---especially, the software defined networking (SDN) paradigm---offers the Internet community another chance to develop the right kind of architecture and abstractions. This has also led to a great resurgence in interest of applying formal methods to specification, verification, and synthesis of networking protocols and applications. In this paper, we present a self-contained tutorial of the formidable amount of work that has been done in formal methods, and present a survey of its applications to networking.Comment: 30 pages, submitted to IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorial