A rewriting logic approach to the formal specification and verification of web applications

Alpuente, María; Ballis, Demis; Romero, Daniel

doi:10.1016/j.scico.2013.07.014

Cited by 12 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…We believe that this integration can improve the quality of the analysis, allowing for more erroneous/unexpected behaviours to be detected. We also want to extend the forward slicing algorithm to a language for concurrent multiparty communications [38], and investigate possible extensions that exploit static analysis techniques [39][40][41] as well as dynamic verification methodologies [42,43].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modeling and Analyzing Reaction Systems in Maude

Ballis,

Brodo,

Falaschi

2024

Electronics

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Reaction Systems (RSs) are a successful computational framework for modeling systems inspired by biochemistry. An RS defines a set of rules (reactions) over a finite set of entities (e.g., molecules, proteins, genes, etc.). A computation in this system is performed by rewriting a finite set of entities (a computation state) using all the enabled reactions in the RS, thereby producing a new set of entities (a new computation state). The number of entities in the reactions and in the computation states can be large, making the analysis of RS behavior difficult without a proper automated support. In this paper, we use the Maude language—a programming language based on rewriting logic—to define a formal executable semantics for RSs, which can be used to precisely simulate the system behavior as well as to perform reachability analysis over the system computation space. Then, by enriching the proposed semantics, we formalize a forward slicer algorithm for RSs that allows us to observe the evolution of the system on both the initial input and a fragment of it (the slicing criterion), thus facilitating the detection of forward causality and influence relations due to the absence/presence of some entities in the slicing criterion. The pursued approach is illustrated by a biological reaction system that models a gene regulation network for controlling the process of differentiation of T helper lymphocytes.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modeling and Analyzing Reaction Systems in Maude

Ballis,

Brodo,

Falaschi

2024

Electronics

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“…Besides the applications outlined in this article, further applications could benefit from the optimization of variant generation that is achieved by Presto. For instance, an important number of applications (and tools) are currently based on narrowing-based variant generation: for example, the protocol analyzers Maude-NPA (Escobar et al 2009) and Tamarin (Meier et al 2013), Maude debuggers and program analyzers (Alpuente et al 2016;2014a), termination provers, variant-based satisfiability checkers, coherence and confluence provers, and different applications of symbolic reachability analysis (Durán et al 2020a). Also, as stated in Leuschel and Lehmann (2000), there are big ad-vantages for using the PD approach to model checking due to the built-in support of LP for non-determinism and unification.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Symbolic Specialization of Rewriting Logic Theories with`Presto`

Alpuente¹,

Escobar²,

Sapiña³

et al. 2022

Theory and Practice of Logic Programming

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This paper introduces $\tt{{Presto}}$ , a symbolic partial evaluator for Maude’s rewriting logic theories that can improve system analysis and verification. In $\tt{{Presto}}$ , the automated optimization of a conditional rewrite theory $\mathcal{R}$ (whose rules define the concurrent transitions of a system) is achieved by partially evaluating, with respect to the rules of $\mathcal{R}$ , an underlying, companion equational logic theory $\mathcal{E}$ that specifies the algebraic structure of the system states of $\mathcal{R}$ . This can be particularly useful for specializing an overly general equational theory $\mathcal{E}$ whose operators may obey complex combinations of associativity, commutativity, and/or identity axioms, when being plugged into a host rewrite theory $\mathcal{R}$ as happens, for instance, in protocol analysis, where sophisticated equational theories for cryptography are used. $\tt{{Presto}}$ implements different unfolding operators that are based on folding variant narrowing (the symbolic engine of Maude’s equational theories). When combined with an appropriate abstraction algorithm, they allow the specialization to be adapted to the theory termination behavior and bring significant improvement while ensuring strong correctness and termination of the specialization. We demonstrate the effectiveness of $\tt{{Presto}}$ in several examples of protocol analysis where it achieves a significant speed-up. Actually, the transformation provided by $\tt{{Presto}}$ may cut down an infinite folding variant narrowing space to a finite one, and moreover, some of the costly algebraic axioms and rule conditions may be eliminated as well. As far as we know, this is the first partial evaluator for Maude that respects the semantics of functional, logic, concurrent, and object-oriented computations.

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“…However,in our work, we would not want such feature as it would lead to incomplete specifications and also in future work, we aim to use static verification approaches to identify the requirement bugs. Alpuente [2] provides a rewriting logic approach to specify web applications -this work handles specifying the DB interactions, session interactions, server-client interactions for each operation, these are implementation aspects which are abstracted out in our work handles formal specifications at the requirements phase.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

StaBL - State Based Language for Specification of Web Applications

Venkatesan,

Chakrabarti

2019

Preprint

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Context and motivation] Usage of Formal Specification languages is scarce in web application development as compared to safety critical/hardware systems. [Question/problem] An apt formal specification language should provide the following features: Firstly, it should have well-defined semantics, so that specifications written in it can not be inherently ambiguous. Secondly, it should have tool support for automatic detection of specification bugs. Additionally, for domains like web development, it is important that specification formalisms build over familiar notations, as the benefits of learning highly mathematical notations in such domains are perceived to be low. [Principal ideas/results] This work presents a State Based Language inspired by Statecharts called StaBL for specification of web applications, and how StaBL can be used for writing such specifications. We also present modifications to the language w.r.t Statechart which facilitate writing modular and scalable specification. [Contribution] In particular, we present the feature of locally scoped variables with inter-state data-flow. We summarise our experience of developing specifications with StaBL, which shows that StaBL specifications, on the one hand, are able to capture most essential elements of the functional aspects of a web application while foregoing much of the verbosity of a regular programming language.

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A rewriting logic approach to the formal specification and verification of web applications

Cited by 12 publications

References 30 publications

Modeling and Analyzing Reaction Systems in Maude

Modeling and Analyzing Reaction Systems in Maude

Symbolic Specialization of Rewriting Logic Theories with`Presto`

StaBL - State Based Language for Specification of Web Applications

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A rewriting logic approach to the formal specification and verification of web applications

Cited by 12 publications

References 30 publications

Modeling and Analyzing Reaction Systems in Maude

Modeling and Analyzing Reaction Systems in Maude

Symbolic Specialization of Rewriting Logic Theories withPresto

StaBL - State Based Language for Specification of Web Applications

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Product

Resources

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Symbolic Specialization of Rewriting Logic Theories with`Presto`