To harness the power of multi-core and distributed platforms, and to make the development of concurrent software more accessible to software engineers, different object-oriented concurrency models such as SCOOP have been proposed. Despite the practical importance of analysing SCOOP programs, there are currently no general verification approaches that operate directly on program code without additional annotations. One reason for this is the multitude of partially conflicting semantic formalisations for SCOOP (either in theory or by-implementation). Here, we propose a simple graph transformation system (GTS) based run-time semantics for SCOOP that grasps the most common features of all known semantics of the language. This run-time model is implemented in the stateof-the-art GTS tool GROOVE, which allows us to simulate, analyse, and verify a subset of SCOOP programs with respect to deadlocks and other behavioural properties. Besides proposing the first approach to verify SCOOP programs by automatic translation to GTS, we also highlight our experiences of applying GTS (and especially GROOVE) for specifying semantics in the form of a run-time model, which should be transferable to GTS models for other concurrent languages and libraries.
Abstract. A number of novel programming languages and libraries have been proposed that offer simpler-to-use models of concurrency than threads. It is challenging, however, to devise execution models that successfully realise their abstractions without forfeiting performance or introducing unintended behaviours. This is exemplified by Scoop-a concurrent object-oriented message-passing language-which has seen multiple semantics proposed and implemented over its evolution. We propose a "semantics workbench" with fully and semi-automatic tools for Scoop, that can be used to analyse and compare programs with respect to different execution models. We demonstrate its use in checking the consistency of semantics by applying it to a set of representative programs, and highlighting a deadlock-related discrepancy between the principal execution models of the language. Our workbench is based on a modular and parameterisable graph transformation semantics implemented in the Groove tool. We discuss how graph transformations are leveraged to atomically model intricate language abstractions, and how the visual yet algebraic nature of the model can be used to ascertain soundness.
Abstract. A number of high-level languages and libraries have been proposed that offer novel and simple to use abstractions for concurrent, asynchronous, and distributed programming. The execution models that realise them, however, often change over time-whether to improve performance, or to extend them to new language features-potentially affecting behavioural and safety properties of existing programs. This is exemplified by Scoop, a message-passing approach to concurrent object-oriented programming that has seen multiple changes proposed and implemented, with demonstrable consequences for an idiomatic usage of its core abstraction. We propose a semantics comparison workbench for Scoop with fully and semiautomatic tools for analysing and comparing the state spaces of programs with respect to different execution models or semantics. We demonstrate its use in checking the consistency of properties across semantics by applying it to a set of representative programs, and highlighting a deadlock-related discrepancy between the principal execution models of Scoop. Furthermore, we demonstrate the extensibility of the workbench by generalising the formalisation of an execution model to support recently proposed extensions for distributed programming. Our workbench is based on a modular and parameterisable graph transformation semantics implemented in the Groove tool. We discuss how graph transformations are leveraged to atomically model intricate language abstractions, how the visual yet algebraic nature of the model can be used to ascertain soundness, and highlight how the approach could be applied to similar languages.
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