Aluminum: Principled scenario exploration through minimality

Nelson, Tim; Saghafi, Salman; Dougherty, Daniel J.; Fisler, Kathi; Krishnamurthi, Shriram

doi:10.1109/icse.2013.6606569

Cited by 46 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…Here we assert that starting from the first node in a Hamiltonian path and transitively following the edges in the graph reaches all other nodes in the graph (lines [13][14][15][16][17]. We expect this check (line 19) to return no counterexample.…”

Section: αRby For Alloy Usersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Aluminum [13] implements an interesting heuristic for minimizing Alloy instances and by default showing the minimal one first. It also allows the user to augment the current instance by selecting one or more tuples to be included in the next instance.…”

Section: Implementation Considerationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…At the very least, a tool must convert the generated model into a form suitable for showing to the user; in the case of Alloy [8], this includes projecting higher-arity relations so that the model can be visualized as a set of snapshots. In some cases, the analysis may involve repeating the model finding step, e.g., to find a minimal model by requesting a solution with fewer tuples [13].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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αRby—An Embedding of Alloy in Ruby

Milićević

Efrati

Jackson

2014

Lecture Notes in Computer Science

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Abstract. We present αRby-an embedding of the Alloy language in Rubyand demonstrate the benefits of having a declarative modeling language (backed by an automated solver) embedded in a traditional object-oriented imperative programming language. This approach aims to bring these two distinct paradigms (imperative and declarative) together in a novel way. We argue that having the other paradigm available within the same language is beneficial to both the modeling community of Alloy users and the object-oriented community of Ruby programmers. In this paper, we primarily focus on the benefits for the Alloy community, namely, how αRby provides elegant solutions to several well-known, outstanding problems: (1) mixed execution, (2) specifying partial instances, (3) staged model finding.

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Section: αRby For Alloy Usersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Implementation Considerationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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αRby—An Embedding of Alloy in Ruby

Milićević

Efrati

Jackson

2014

Lecture Notes in Computer Science

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“…Aluminum [18] supports exploration by returning minimal models: it instruments the model-finding engine of Alloy. It thus inherits the limitation that it requires user-supplied bounds, and it cannot generate provenance information.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In previous work [18] the authors and colleagues have developed a tool, Aluminum, that was an initial exploration of these ideas, based on SAT-solving technology and evaluated specifically in the context of software engineering. Razor is an extension and generalization of Aluminum.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Razor: Provenance and Exploration in Model-Finding

Saghafi

Dougherty

EPiC Series in Computing

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Razor is a model-finder for first-order theories presented geometric form; geometric logic is a variant of first-order logic that focuses on "observable" properties. An important guiding principle of Razor is that it be accessible to users who are not necessarily expert in formal methods; application areas include software design, analysis of security protocols and policies, and configuration management.A core functionality of the tool is that it supports exploration of the space of models of a given input theory, as well as presentation of provenance information about the elements and facts of a model. The crucial mathematical tool is the ordering relation on models determined by homomorphism, and Razor prefers models that are minimal with respect to this homomorphismordering.

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Incremental Analysis of Evolving Alloy Models

Wang

Gligoric

et al. 2019

Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems

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Alloy is a well-known tool-set for building and analyzing software designs and models. Alloy's key strengths are its intuitive notation based on relational logic, and its powerful analysis engine backed by propositional satisfiability (SAT) solvers to help users find subtle design flaws. However, scaling the analysis to the designs of real-world systems remains an important technical challenge. This paper introduces a new approach, iAlloy, for more efficient analysis of Alloy models. Our key insight is that users often make small and frequent changes and repeatedly run the analyzer when developing Alloy models, and the development cost can be reduced with the incremental analysis over these changes. iAlloy is based on two techniques-a static technique based on a lightweight impact analysis and a dynamic technique based on solution re-use-which in many cases helps avoid potential costly SAT solving. Experimental results show that iAlloy significantly outperforms Alloy analyzer in the analysis of evolving Alloy models with more than 50% reduction in SAT solver calls on average, and up to 7x speedup.

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Aluminum: Principled scenario exploration through minimality

Cited by 46 publications

References 10 publications

αRby—An Embedding of Alloy in Ruby

αRby—An Embedding of Alloy in Ruby

Razor: Provenance and Exploration in Model-Finding

Incremental Analysis of Evolving Alloy Models

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