Extending Datalog with Declarative Updates

The semantics of static deductive databases is well understood based on the work in logic programming. In the past decade, various methods to incorporate update constructs into logic programming and deductive databases have been proposed. However, there is still no consensus about the appropriate treatment of dynamic behavior in deductive databases. In this paper, we propose a language called DatalogU, which is a minimal but powerful extension of Datalog with updates to base relations. DatalogU allows the user to program set-oriented complex database transactions with concurrent, disjunctive and sequential update operations in a simple and direct way. It has a simple and intuitive declarative semantics that naturally accounts for set-oriented updates in deductive databases.     

可更新Datalog的分布式时态逻辑扩展及应用

针对现有的分布式逻辑语言缺乏完整时态表达力等问题,将分布式时态逻辑谓词引入Datalog规则,提出TU-Datalog语言。该语言通过融入U-Datalog的非即时性更新语义,形成完全声明式具有强大时态表达力的逻辑编程语言和环境。通过扩展U-Datalog逻辑固定点语义,提出TU-Datalog语言的固定点时态演化规则,并对该语言的语法、语义、评价算法进行了研究,最后对该语言的应用做了说明和示例。     

An update calculus for expressing type-safe program updates

The dominant share of software development costs is spent on software maintenance, particularly the process of updating programs in response to changing requirements. Currently, such program changes tend to be performed using text editors, an unreliable method that often causes many errors. In addition to syntax and type errors, logical errors can be easily introduced since text editors cannot guarantee that changes are performed consistently over the whole program. All these errors can cause a correct and perfectly running program to become instantly unusable. It is not surprising that this situation exists because the “text-editor method” reveals a low-level view of programs that fails to reflect the structure of programs.We address this problem by pursuing a programming-language-based approach to program updates. To this end we discuss in this paper the design and requirements of an update language for expressing update programs. We identify as the essential part of any update language a scope update that performs coordinated update of the definition and all uses of a symbol. As the underlying basis for update languages, we define an update calculus for updating lambda calculus programs. We develop a type system for the update calculus that infers the possible type changes that can be caused by an update program. We demonstrate that type-safe update programs that fulfill certain structural constraints preserve the type correctness of lambda terms. The update calculus can serve as a basis for higher-level update languages, such as for Haskell or Java.     

Transactions and updates in deductive databases

In this paper, we develop a new approach that provides a smooth integration of extensional updates and declarative query languages for deductive databases. The approach is based on a declarative specification of updates in rule bodies. Updates are not executed as soon as evaluated. Instead, they are collected and then applied to the database when the query evaluation is completed. We call this approach nonimmediate update semantics. We provide a top-down and equivalent bottom-up semantics which reflect the corresponding computation models. We also package set of updates into transactions and we provide a formal semantics for transactions. Then, in order to handle complex transactions, we extend the transaction language with control constructors still preserving formal semantics and semantics equivalence     

Programming with logical queries, bulk updates, and hypotheticalreasoning

The paper presents a language of update programs that integrates logical queries, bulk updates and hypothetical reasoning in a seamless manner. There is no syntactic or semantic distinction between queries and updates. Update programs extend logic programs with negation in both syntax and semantics. They allow bulk updates in which an arbitrary update is applied simultaneously for all answers of an arbitrary query. Hypothetical reasoning is naturally supported by testing the success or failure of an update. We describe an alternating fixpoint semantics of update programs and show that it can express all nondeterministic database transformations     

Logical approximation for program analysis

The abstract interpretation of programs relates the exact semantics of a programming language to a finite approximation of those semantics. In this article, we describe an approach to abstract interpretation that is based in logic and logic programming. Our approach consists of faithfully representing a transition system within logic and then manipulating this initial specification to create a logical approximation of the original specification. The objective is to derive a logical approximation that can be interpreted as a terminating forward-chaining logic program; this ensures that the approximation is finite and that, furthermore, an appropriate logic programming interpreter can implement the derived approximation. We are particularly interested in the specification of the operational semantics of programming languages in ordered logic, a technique we call substructural operational semantics (SSOS). We show that manifestly sound control flow and alias analyses can be derived as logical approximations of the substructural operational semantics of relevant languages.     

Declarative XML Update Language Based on a Higher Data Model

With the extensive use of XML in applications over the Web, how to update XML data is becoming an important issue because the role of XML has expanded beyond traditional applications in which XML is used for information exchange and data representation over the Web. So far, several languages have been proposed for updating XML data, but they are all based on lower, so-called graph-based or tree-based data models. Update requests are thus expressed in a nonintuitive and unnatural way and update statements are too complicated to comprehend. This paper presents a novel declarative XML update language which is an extension of the XML-RL query language. Compared with other existing XML update languages, it has the following features. First, it is the only XML data manipulation language based on a higher data model. Second, this language can express complex update requests at multiple levels in a hierarchy in a simple and flat way. Third, this language directly supports the functionality of updating complex objects while all other update languages do not support these operations. Lastly, most of existing languages use rename to modify attribute and element names, which is a different way from updates on value. The proposed language modifies tag names, values, and objects in a unified way by the introduction of three kinds of logical binding variables: object variables, value variables, and name variables.     

基于函数式语义的循环和递归程序结构通用证明技术

各类安全攸关系统的可靠运行离不开软件程序的正确执行.程序的演绎验证技术为程序执行的正确性提供高度保障.程序语言种类繁多,且用途覆盖高可靠性场景的新式语言不断涌现,难以为每种语言设计支撑其程序验证任务的整套逻辑规则,并证明其相对于形式语义的可靠性和完备性.语言无关的程序验证技术提供以程序语言的语义为参数的验证过程及其可靠性结果.对每种程序语言,提供其形式语义后可直接获得面向该语言的程序验证过程.提出一种面向大步操作语义的语言无关演绎验证技术,其核心是对不同语言中循环、递归等可导致无界行为的语法结构进行可靠推理的通用方法.特别地,借助大步操作语义的一种函数式形式化提供表达程序中子结构所执行计算的能力,从而允许借助辅助信息对子结构进行推理.证明所提出验证技术的可靠性和相对完备性,通过命令式、函数式语言中的程序验证实例初步评估了该技术的有效性,并在Coq辅助证明工具中形式化了所有理论结果和验证实例,为基于辅助证明工具实现面向大步语义的语言无关程序验证工具提供了基础.     

Aspects preserving properties

Aspect Oriented Programming can arbitrarily distort the semantics of programs. In particular, weaving can invalidate crucial safety and liveness properties of the base program. In this article, we identify categories of aspects that preserve some classes of properties. Specialized aspect languages are then designed to ensure that aspects belong to a specific category and, therefore, that woven programs will preserve the corresponding properties.Our categories of aspects, inspired by Katz’s, comprise observers, aborters, confiners and weak intruders. Observers introduce new instructions and a new local state but they do not modify the base program’s state and control-flow. Aborters are observers which may also abort executions. Confiners only ensure that executions remain in the reachable states of the base program. Weak intruders are confiners between two advice executions. These categories (along with two others) are defined formally based on a language independent abstract semantics framework. The classes of preserved properties are defined as subsets of LTL for deterministic programs and CTL* for non-deterministic ones. We can formally prove that, for any program, the weaving of any aspect in a category preserves any property in the related class.We present, for most aspect categories, a specialized aspect language which ensures that any aspect written in that language belongs to the corresponding category. It can be proved that these languages preserve the corresponding classes of properties by construction. The aspect languages share the same expressive pointcut language and are designed w.r.t. a common imperative base language.Each category and language is illustrated by simple examples. The appendix provides semantics and two instances of proofs: the proof of preservation of properties by a category and the proof that all aspects written in a language belong to the corresponding category.     

Noninterference in a predicative polymorphic calculus for access control

Polymorphic programming languages have been adapted for constructing distributed access control systems, where a program represents a proof of eligibility according to a given policy. As a security requirement, it is typically stated that the programs of such languages should satisfy noninterference. However, this property has not been defined and proven semantically. In this paper, we first propose a semantics based on Henkin models for a predicative polymorphic access control language based on lambda-calculus. A formal semantic definition of noninterference is then proposed through logical relations. We prove a type soundness theorem which states that any well-typed program of our language meets the noninterference property defined in this paper. In this way, it is guaranteed that access requests from an entity do not interfere with those from unrelated or more trusted entities.     

A family of syntactic logical relations for the semantics of Haskell-like languages

Logical relations are a fundamental and powerful tool for reasoning about programs in languages with parametric polymorphism. Logical relations suitable for reasoning about observational behavior in polymorphic calculi supporting various programming language features have been introduced in recent years. Unfortunately, the calculi studied are typically idealized, and the results obtained for them offer only partial insight into the impact of such features on observational behavior in implemented languages. In this paper we show how to bring reasoning via logical relations closer to bear on real languages by deriving results that are more pertinent to an intermediate language for the (mostly) lazy functional language Haskell like GHC Core. To provide a more fine-grained analysis of program behavior than is possible by reasoning about program equivalence alone, we work with an abstract notion of relating observational behavior of computations which has among its specializations both observational equivalence and observational approximation. We take selective strictness into account, and we consider the impact of different kinds of computational failure, e.g., divergence versus failed pattern matching, because such distinctions are significant in practice. Once distinguished, the relative definedness of different failure causes needs to be considered, because different orders here induce different observational relations on programs (including the choice between equivalence and approximation). Our main contribution is the construction of an entire family of logical relations, parameterized over a definedness order on failure causes, each member of which characterizes the corresponding observational relation. Although we deal with properties very much tied to types, we base our results on a type-erasing semantics since this is more faithful to actual implementations.     

Building Interpreters with Rewriting Strategies

Programming language semantics based on pure rewrite rules suffers from the gap between the rewriting strategy implemented in rewriting engines and the intended evaluation strategy. This paper shows how programmable rewriting strategies can be used to implement interpreters for programming languages based on rewrite rules. The advantage of this approach is that reduction rules are first class entities that can be reused in different strategies, even in other kinds of program transformations such as optimizers. The approach is illustrated with several interpreters for the lambda calculus based on implicit and explicit (parallel) substitution, different strategies including normalization, eager evaluation, lazy evaluation, and lazy evaluation with updates. An extension with pattern matching and choice shows that such interpreters can easily be extended.     

An operational semantics for object-oriented concepts based on the class hierarchy

The formalisation of object-oriented languages is essential for describing the implementation details of specific programming languages or for developing program verification techniques. However there has been relatively little formalisation work aimed at abstractly describing the fundamental concepts of object-oriented programming, separate from specific language considerations or suitability for a particular verification style. In this paper we address this issue by formalising a language that includes the core object-oriented programming language concepts of field tests and updates, methods, constructors, subclassing, multithreading, and synchronisation, built on top of standard sequential programming constructs. The abstract syntax is relatively close to the core of typical object-oriented programming languages such as Java. A novel aspect of the syntax is that objects and classes are encapsulated within a single syntactic term, including their fields and methods. Furthermore, class terms are structured according to the class hierarchy, and objects appear as subterms of their class (and method instances as subterms of the relevant object). This helps to narrow the gap between how a programmer thinks about their code and the underlying mathematical objects in the semantics. The semantics is defined operationally, so that all actions a program may take, such as testing or setting local variables and fields, or invoking methods on other objects, appear on the labels of the transitions. A process-algebraic style of interprocess communication is used for object and class interactions. A benefit of this label-based approach to the semantics is that a separation of concerns can be made when defining the rules of the different constructs, and the rules tend to be more concise. The basic rules for individual commands may be composed into more powerful rules that operate at the level of classes and objects. The traces generated by the operational semantics are used as the basis for establishing equivalence between classes.     

Updating Recursive XML Views of Relations

This paper investigates the view update problem for XML views published from relational data.We consider XML views defined in terms of mappings directed by possibly reeursive DTDs compressed into DAGs and stored in relations. We provide new techniques to efficiently support XML view updates specified in terms of XPath expressions with recursion and complex filters.The interaction between XPath recursion and DAG compression of XML views makes the analysis of the XML view update problem rather intriguing.Furthermore,many issues are still open even for relational view updates, and need to be explored.In response to these,on the XML side,we revise the notion of side effects and update semantics based on the semantics of XML views,and present efficient algorithms to translate XML updates to relational view updates. On the relational side,we propose a mild condition on SPJ views,and show that under this condition the analysis of deletions on relational views becomes PTIME while the insertion analysis is NP-complete.We develop an efficient algorithm to process relational view deletions,and a heuristic algorithm to handle view insertions.Finally,we present an experimental study to verify the effectiveness of our techniques.     

SEMANOL (73) a metalanguage for programming the semantics of programming languages

Summary SEMANOL is a practical programming system for writing readable formal specifications of the syntax and semantics of programming languages. SEMANOL is based on a theory of semantics which embraces algorithmic (operational) and extensional (input/output) semantics. Specifications for large contemporary languages have been constructed in the formal language, SEMANOL (73), which is a readable high-level notation. A SEMANOL (73) specification can be executed (by an existing interpreter program); when given a program from the specified language, and its input, the execution of the SEMANOL (73) specification produces the program's output. The demonstrated executability of SEMANOL (73) provides important practical advantages. This paper includes discussions of the theory of semantics underlying SEMANOL, the syntax and semantics of the SEMANOL (73) language, the use of the SEMANOL (73) language in the SEMANOL method for describing programming languages, and the contrast between the Vienna definition method (VDL) and SEMANOL.     

Optimizing Queries with Object Updates

Object-oriented databases (OODBs) provide powerful data abstractions and modeling facilities but they usually lack a suitable framework for query processing and optimization. Even though there is an increasing number of recent proposals on OODB query optimization, only few of them are actually focused on query optimization in the presence of object identity and destructive updates, features often supported by most realistic OODB languages. This paper presents a formal framework for optimizing object-oriented queries in the presence of side effects. These queries may contain object updates at any place and in any form. We present a language extension to the monoid comprehension calculus to express these object-oriented features and we give a formal meaning to these extensions. Our method is based on denotational semantics, which is often used to give a formal meaning to imperative programming languages. The semantics of our language extensions is expressed in terms of our monoid calculus, without the need of any fundamental change to our basic framework. Our method not only maintains referential transparency, which allows us to do meaningful query optimization, but it is also practical for optimizing OODB queries since it allows the same optimization techniques applied to regular queries to be used with minimal changes for OODB queries with updates.     

Extending the ODMG object model with triggers

We extend the standard for object-oriented databases, ODMG, with reactive features, by proposing a language for specifying triggers and defining its semantics. This extension has several implications, thus we make three different specific contributions. First, the definition of a declarative data manipulation language for ODMG, which is missing in the current version of the standard; such a definition requires revisiting data manipulation in ODMG and also addressing issues related to set-oriented versus instance-oriented computation. Then, the definition of a trigger language for ODMG, unifying also the SQL:1999 proposal and providing support for trigger inheritance and overriding. Finally, the development of a formal semantics for the proposed data manipulation and trigger languages.     

Detection of parallel executable steps for programs with arrays

The detection of informational and logical program step dependencies is a key problem when performing equivalent transformations. In this article we consider this problem for systems of loops which represent concentration of mass computations and are the biggest challenge in parallel execution. The prototype of program formalization is C language just because of it’s popularity and it being an intermediate language for compilation of most programming languages including object-oriented ones.