Syntactic-Semantic Incrementality for Agile Verification

in Science of Computer Programming (2015), 97(0), 47-54

Modern software systems are continuously evolving, often because systems requirements change over time. Responding to requirements changes is one of the principles of agile methodologies. In this paper we ... [more ▼]

Modern software systems are continuously evolving, often because systems requirements change over time. Responding to requirements changes is one of the principles of agile methodologies. In this paper we envision the seamless integration of automated verification techniques within agile methodologies, thanks to the support for incrementality. Incremental verification accommodates the changes that occur within the schedule of frequent releases of software agile processes. We propose a general approach to developing families of verifiers that can support incremental verification for different kinds of artifacts and properties. The proposed syntactic-semantic approach is rooted in operator precedence grammars and their support for incremental parsing. Incremental verification procedures are encoded as attribute grammars, whose incremental evaluation goes hand in hand with incremental parsing. [less ▲]

A Syntactic-Semantic Approach to Incremental Verification

E-print/Working paper (2013)

Software verification of evolving systems is challenging mainstream methodologies and tools. Formal verification techniques often conflict with the time constraints imposed by change management practices ... [more ▼]

Software verification of evolving systems is challenging mainstream methodologies and tools. Formal verification techniques often conflict with the time constraints imposed by change management practices for evolving systems. Since changes in these systems are often local to restricted parts, an incremental verification approach could be beneficial. This paper introduces SiDECAR, a general framework for the definition of verification procedures, which are made incremental by the framework itself. Verification procedures are driven by the syntactic structure (defined by a grammar) of the system and encoded as semantic attributes associated with the grammar. Incrementality is achieved by coupling the evaluation of semantic attributes with an incremental parsing technique. We show the application of SiDECAR to the definition of two verification procedures: probabilistic verification of reliability requirements and verification of safety properties. [less ▲]