The expressiveness of spider diagrams augmented with constants

Spider diagrams are a visual language for expressing logical statements or constraints. Several sound and complete spider diagram systems have been developed and it has been shown that they are equivalent in expressive power to monadic first order logic with equality. However, these sound and complete spider diagram systems do not contain syntactic elements analogous to constants in first order predicate logic. We extend the spider diagram language to include constant spiders which represent specific individuals. Formal semantics are given for the extended diagram language. We prove that this extended system is equivalent in expressive power to the language of spider diagrams without constants and, hence, equivalent to monadic first order logic with equality.     

Integrated Temporal Reasoning with Periodic Events

In many areas of Computer Science, including planning, workflows, guidelines, and protocol management, one has to deal with abstract plans, procedures, or schedules involving temporal constraints between classes of actions that have to be repeated at periodic times and may be instantiated in different ways for different executions of the plans (procedures, schedules). In this paper we propose an integrated framework to deal with both qualitative temporal constraints on classes of actions and temporal constraints between instances of actions, in which temporal reasoning is used to amalgamate both types of constraints and to check their consistency. In particular, we consider an expressive formalism to deal with temporal constraints between classes of actions (with special attention to periodic actions) which takes into account different components such as frame times, numeric quantification, periods, and qualitative relations. We define the notions of (contextual) concretization of qualitative temporal constraints between classes and use this notion to formally define the consistency of a knowledge base of temporal constraints between classes and a set of temporal constraints on instances, and to define the algorithm for checking such a consistency. An application for scheduling lessons in a school is shown in an example.     

Hyper temporal networks

Simple Temporal Networks (STNs) provide a powerful and general tool for representing conjunctions of maximum delay constraints over ordered pairs of temporal variables. In this paper we introduce Hyper Temporal Networks (HyTNs), a strict generalization of STNs, to overcome the limitation of considering only conjunctions of constraints but maintaining a practical efficiency in the consistency check of the instances. In a Hyper Temporal Network a single temporal hyperarc constraint may be defined as a set of two or more maximum delay constraints which is satisfied when at least one of these delay constraints is satisfied. HyTNs are meant as a light generalization of STNs offering an interesting compromise. On one side, there exist practical pseudo-polynomial time algorithms for checking consistency and computing feasible schedules for HyTNs. On the other side, HyTNs offer a more powerful model accommodating natural constraints that cannot be expressed by STNs like “Trigger off exactly δ min before (after) the occurrence of the first (last) event in a set.”, which are used to represent synchronization events in some process aware information systems/workflow models proposed in the literature.     

Benchmark frameworks and τBench

Software engineering frameworks tame the complexity of large collections of classes by identifying structural invariants, regularizing interfaces, and increasing sharing across the collection. We wish to appropriate these benefits for families of closely related benchmarks, say for evaluating query engine implementation strategies. We introduce the notion of a benchmark framework, an ecosystem of benchmarks that are related in semantically rich ways and enabled by organizing principles. A benchmark framework is realized by iteratively changing one individual benchmark into another, say by modifying the data format, adding schema constraints, or instantiating a different workload. Paramount to our notion of benchmark frameworks are the ease of describing the differences between individual benchmarks and the utility of methods to validate the correctness of each benchmark component by exploiting the overarching ecosystem. As a detailed case study, we introduce τBench, a benchmark framework consisting of ten individual benchmarks, spanning XML, XQuery, XML Schema, and PSM, along with temporal extensions to each. The second case study examines the Mining Unstructured Data benchmark framework, and the third examines the potential benefits of rendering the TPC family as a benchmark framework. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Upper and Lower Bounds on the Complexity of Generalised Resolution and Generalised Constraint Satisfaction Problems

Capturing propositional logic, constraint satisfaction problems and systems of polynomial equations, we introduce the notion of systems with finite instantiation by partial assignments, fipa-systems for short, which are independent of special representations of problem instances, but which are based on an axiomatic approach with instantiation (or substitution) by partial assignments as the fundamental notion. Fipa-systems seem to constitute the most general framework allowing for a theory of resolution with nontrivial upper and lower bounds. For every fipa-system we generalise relativised hierarchies originating from generalised Horn formulas [14,26,33,43], and obtain hierarchies of problem instances with recognition and satisfiability decision in polynomial time and linear space, quasi-automatising relativised and generalised tree resolution and utilising a general “quasi-tight” lower bound for tree resolution. And generalising width-restricted resolution from [7,14,25,33], for every fipa-system a (stronger) family of hierarchies of unsatisfiable instances with polynomial time recognition is introduced, weakly automatising relativised and generalised full resolution and utilising a general lower bound for full resolution generalising [7,17,25,33].     

Class Refinement as Semantics of Correct Object Substitutability

Subtype polymorphism, based on syntactic conformance of objects' methods and used for substituting subtype objects for supertype objects, is a characteristic feature of the object-oriented programming style. While certainly very useful, typechecking of syntactic conformance of subtype objects to supertype objects is insufficient to guarantee correctness of object substitutability. In addition, the behaviour of subtype objects must be constrained to achieve correctness. In class-based systems classes specify the behaviour of the objects they instantiate. In this paper we define the class refinement relation which captures the semantic constraints that must be imposed on classes to guarantee correctness of substitutability in all clients of the objects these classes instantiate. Clients of class instances are modelled as programs making an iterative choice over invocation of class methods, and we formally prove that when a class C′ refines a class C, substituting instances of C′ for instances of C is refinement for the clients. Received May 1999 / Accepted in revised form March 2000     

On steady state of continuous min-plus systems

We study the steady state of a class of continuous min-plus linear systems by using the notion of system type. The aim is to control systems in order that outputs asymptotically track certain polynomial reference inputs in relation with the just-in-time criterion. As in conventional system theory, the use of system type property gives very simple expression for the resulting controllers. Disturbances acting on the system output are also considered.     

On simplest possible solutions for Post Correspondence Problems

We investigate the simplicity of solutions for instances of the Post Correspondence Problem, from the point of view of both index words and terminal words. This leads to the notion of amixed primality type of an instance. Our main result gives an exhaustive characterization of mixed primality types.     

WS-BPEL Extensions for Versioning

This article proposes specific extensions for WS-BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) to support versioning of processes and partner links. It introduces new activities and extends existing activities, including partner links, invoke, receive, import, and onmessage activities. It proposes version-related extensions to variables and introduces version handlers. The proposed extensions represent a complete solution for process-level and scope-level versioning at development, deployment, and run-time. It also provides means to version applications that consist of several BPEL processes, and to put temporal constraints on versions. The proposed approach has been tested in real-world environment. It solves major challenges in BPEL versioning.     

Complexity of Approximating CSP with Balance / Hard Constraints

We study two natural extensions of Constraint Satisfaction Problems (CSPs). Balance-Max-CSP requires that in any feasible assignment each element in the domain is used an equal number of times. An instance of Hard-Max-CSP consists of soft constraints and hard constraints, and the goal is to maximize the weight of satisfied soft constraints while satisfying all the hard constraints. These two extensions contain many fundamental problems not captured by CSPs, and challenge traditional theories about CSPs in a more general framework. Max-2-SAT and Max-Horn-SAT are the only two nontrivial classes of Boolean CSPs that admit a robust satisfibiality algorithm, i.e., an algorithm that finds an assignment satisfying at least (1 ? g(ε)) fraction of constraints given a (1 ? ε)-satisfiable instance, where g(ε) → 0 as ε → 0, and g(0) = 0. We prove the inapproximability of these problems with balance or hard constraints, showing that each variant changes the nature of the problems significantly (in different ways). For instance, deciding whether an instance of 2-SAT admits a balanced assignment is NP-hard, and for Max-2-SAT with hard constraints, it is hard to find a constant-factor approximation even on (1 ? ε)-satisfiable instances (in particular, the version with hard constraints does not admit a robust satisfiability algorithm). We also study hardness results for a certain CSP over a larger domain capturing ordering constraints: we show that hard constraints rule out constant-factor approximation algorithms. All our hardness results are almost optimal — they completely rule out algorithms with certain properties, or can be matched by simple extensions to existing algorithms.     

Improving active Mealy machine learning for protocol conformance testing

Using a well-known industrial case study from the verification literature, the bounded retransmission protocol, we show how active learning can be used to establish the correctness of protocol implementation I relative to a given reference implementation R. Using active learning, we learn a model M _R of reference implementation R, which serves as input for a model-based testing tool that checks conformance of implementation I to M _R . In addition, we also explore an alternative approach in which we learn a model M _I of implementation I, which is compared to model M _R using an equivalence checker. Our work uses a unique combination of software tools for model construction (Uppaal), active learning (LearnLib, Tomte), model-based testing (JTorX, TorXakis) and verification (CADP, MRMC). We show how these tools can be used for learning models of and revealing errors in implementations, present the new notion of a conformance oracle, and demonstrate how conformance oracles can be used to speed up conformance checking.     

Sketch recognition by fusion of temporal and image-based features

The increasing availability of pen-based hardware has recently resulted in a parallel growth in sketch-based user interfaces. Sketch-based user interfaces aim to combine the expressive power of free-hand sketching with the processing power of computers. Most sketch-based systems require intelligent ink processing capabilities, which makes the development of robust sketch recognition algorithms a primary concern in the field. So far, the research in sketch recognition has produced various independent approaches to recognition, each of which uses a particular kind of information (e.g., geometric and spatial constraints, image-based features, temporal stroke-ordering patterns). These methods were designed in isolation as stand-alone algorithms, and there has been little work treating various recognition methods as alternative sources of information that can be combined to increase sketch recognition accuracy. In this paper, we focus on two such methods and fuse an image-based method with a time-based method in an attempt to combine the knowledge of how objects look (image data) with the knowledge of how they are drawn (temporal data). In the course of combining spatial and temporal information, we also introduce a mathematically well founded fusion method for combining recognizers. Our combination method can be used for isolated sketch recognition as well as full diagram recognition. Our evaluation with two databases shows that fusing image-based and temporal features yields higher recognition rates. These results are the first to confirm the complementary nature of image-based and temporal recognition methods for full sketch recognition, which has long been suggested, but never supported by data.     

Resource-aware policies

In previous papers, we proposed an extension of Spider Diagrams to object-oriented modelling, called Modelling Spider Diagrams (MSDs), as a visual notation for specifying admissible states of instances of types, and for verifying the conformance of configurations of instances with such specifications. Based on this formalisation, we developed a notion of transformation of MSDs, modelling admissible evolutions of configurations. In the original version of MSD, individual instances evolve independently, but in reality evolutions often occur in the context of available resources, so transformations must be extended to take this into account. In this paper we provide an abstract syntax for MSDs, in terms of typed attributed graphs, and a semantics for the specification of policies based on notions from the theory of graph transformations, and we associate with them a notion of resources. We also introduce a synchronisation mechanism, based on annotation of instances with resources, so that the transformations required by a policy occur with respect to available resources. In particular, resources can be atomically produced or consumed or can change their state consistently with the evolution of the spiders subject to the policy.     

Uncertain Voronoi diagram

In this paper, we introduce the fuzzy Voronoi diagram as an extension of the Voronoi diagram. We assume Voronoi sites to be fuzzy points and then define the Voronoi diagram for this kind of sites, then we provide an algorithm for computing this diagram based on Fortune's algorithm which costs O(nlogn) time. Also we introduce the fuzzy Voronoi diagram for a set of fuzzy circles, rather than fuzzy points, of the same radius. We prove that the boundary of this diagram is formed by the intersection of some hyperbolae, and finally we provide an O(n³logn)-time algorithm to compute the boundary.     

Evaluating pattern conformance of UML models: a divide-and-conquer approach and case studies

A design pattern is realized in various forms depending on the context of the applications. There has been intensive research on detecting pattern instances in models and in implementations. However, little work addresses variations of pattern realization. This paper describes an approach for evaluating conformance of pattern variations. This approach uses a divide-and-conquer strategy to evaluate the structural conformance of a UML class diagram to the solution of a design pattern. A design pattern is specified in an extension of the UML that defines the pattern in terms of roles. To demonstrate the approach, we use the Visitor pattern and two case studies of a price calculator and a word processor. We also present a prototype tool that supports the approach.

An optimal arc consistency algorithm for a particular case of sequence constraint

The AtMostSeqCard constraint is the conjunction of a cardinality constraint on a sequence of n variables and of n???q?+?1 constraints AtMost u on each subsequence of size q. This constraint is useful in car-sequencing and crew-rostering problems. In van Hoeve et al. (Constraints 14(2):273–292, 2009), two algorithms designed for the AmongSeq constraint were adapted to this constraint with an O(2 ^q n) and O(n ³) worst case time complexity, respectively. In Maher et al. (2008), another algorithm similarly adaptable to filter the AtMostSeqCard constraint with a time complexity of O(n ²) was proposed. In this paper, we introduce an algorithm for achieving arc consistency on the AtMostSeqCard constraint with an O(n) (hence optimal) worst case time complexity. Next, we show that this algorithm can be easily modified to achieve arc consistency on some extensions of this constraint. In particular, the conjunction of a set of m AtMostSeqCard constraints sharing the same scope can be filtered in O(nm). We then empirically study the efficiency of our propagator on instances of the car-sequencing and crew-rostering problems.     

Generalised Coinduction

We introduce the λ-coiteration schema for a distributive law λ of a functor T over a functor F. Under certain conditions it can be shown to uniquely characterise functions into the carrier of a final F-coalgebra, generalising the basic coiteration schema as given by finality. The duals of primitive recursion and course-of-value iteration, which are known extensions of coiteration, arise as instances of our framework. One can furthermore obtain schemata justifying recursive specifications that involve operators such as addition of power series, regular operators on languages, or parallel and sequential composition of processes.Next, the same type of distributive law λ is used to generalise coinductive proof techniques. To this end, we introduce the notion of a λ-bisimulation relation. It specialises to what could be called bisimulation up-to-equality or bisimulation up-to-context for contexts built from operators of the type mentioned above. We state that every such relation is contained in some larger conventional bisimulation and demonstrate that this principle leads to simpler bisimilarity proofs using less complex relations.     

AllDifferent-based filtering for subgraph isomorphism

The subgraph isomorphism problem involves deciding if there exists a copy of a pattern graph in a target graph. This problem may be solved by a complete tree search combined with filtering techniques that aim at pruning branches that do not contain solutions. We introduce a new filtering algorithm based on local all different constraints. We show that this filtering is stronger than other existing filterings — i.e., it prunes more branches — and that it is also more efficient — i.e., it allows one to solve more instances quicker.