Semantic theories of programs with nested interrupts

In the design of dependable software for embedded and real-time operating systems, time analysis is a crucial but extremely difficult issue, the challenge of which is exacerbated due to the randomness and nondeterminism of interrupt handling behaviors. Thus research into a theory that integrates interrupt behaviors and time analysis seems to be important and challenging. In this paper, we present a programming language to describe programs with interrupts that is comprised of two essential parts: main program and interrupt handling programs. We also explore a timed operational semantics and a denotational semantics to specify the meanings of our language. Furthermore, a strategy of deriving denotational semantics from the timed operational semantics is provided to demonstrate the soundness of our operational semantics by showing the consistency between the derived denotational semantics and the original denotational semantics.     

Equivalence of formal semantics definition methods

There are numerous methods of formally defining the semantics of computer languages. Each method has been designed to fulfil a different purpose. For example, some have been designed to make reasoning about languages as easy as possible; others have been designed to be accessible to a large audience and some have been designed to ease implementation of languages. Given two semantics definitions of a language written using two separate semantics definition methods, we must be able to show that the two are in fact equivalent. If we cannot do this then we either have an error in one of the semantics definitions, or more seriously we have a problem with the semantics definition methods themselves.Three methods of defining the semantics of computer languages have been considered, i.e. Denotational Semantics, Structural Operational Semantics and Action Semantics. An equivalence between these three is shown for a specific example language by first defining its semantics using each of the three definition methods. The proof of the equivalence is then constructed by selecting pairs of the semantics definitions and showing that they define the same language.A full version of this paper can be accessed via our web page http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/fmethods/ facj.html     

Transfinite Semantics in the Form of Greatest Fixpoint

Transfinite semantics is a semantics according to which program executions can continue working after an infinite number of steps. Such a view of programs can be useful in the theory of program transformations.So far, transfinite semantics have been succesfully defined for iterative loops. This paper provides an exhaustive definition for semantics that enable also infinitely deep recursion.The definition is actually a parametric schema that defines a family of different transfinite semantics. As standard semantics also match the same schema, our framework describes both standard and transfinite semantics in a uniform way.All semantics are expressed as greatest fixpoints of monotone operators on some complete lattices. It turns out that, for transfinite semantics, the corresponding lattice operators are cocontinuous. According to Kleene’s theorem, this shows that transfinite semantics can be expressed as a limit of iteration which is not transfinite.     

A compact fixpoint semantics for term rewriting systems

This work is motivated by the fact that a “compact” semantics for term rewriting systems, which is essential for the development of effective semantics-based program manipulation tools (e.g. automatic program analyzers and debuggers), does not exist. The big-step rewriting semantics that is most commonly considered in functional programming is the set of values/normal forms that the program is able to compute for any input expression. Such a big-step semantics is unnecessarily oversized, as it contains many “semantically useless” elements that can be retrieved from a smaller set of terms. Therefore, in this article, we present a compressed, goal-independent collecting fixpoint semantics that contains the smallest set of terms that are sufficient to describe, by semantic closure, all possible rewritings. We prove soundness and completeness under ascertained conditions. The compactness of the semantics makes it suitable for applications. Actually, our semantics can be finite whereas the big-step semantics is generally not, and even when both semantics are infinite, the fixpoint computation of our semantics produces fewer elements at each step. To support this claim we report several experiments performed with a prototypical implementation.     

Equivalence of queries that are sensitive to multiplicities

The query equivalence problem has been studied extensively for set-semantics and, more recently, for bag and bag-set semantics. However, SQL queries often combine set, bag and bag-set semantics. For example, an SQL query that returns a multiset of elements may call a subquery or view that returns a set of elements. Queries may access both relations that do not contain duplicates, as well as relations with duplicates. As another example, in SQL one can compute a multiset-union of queries, each of which returns a set of answers. This paper presents combined semantics, which formally models query evaluation combining set, bag and bag-set semantics. The equivalence problem for queries evaluated under combined semantics is studied. A sufficient condition for equivalence is presented. For several important common classes of queries necessary and sufficient conditions for equivalence are presented. An early version of this article appeared in [7]. This paper extends [7] to include bag semantics, in addition to set and bag-set semantics. This work was partially supported by the Israel Science Foundation (Grant 1032/05).     

There is no fully abstract fixpoint semantics for non-deterministic languages with infinite computations

It is well known that for many non-deterministic programming languages there is no continuous fully abstract fixpoint semantics. This is usually attributed to “problems with continuity”, that is, the assumption that the semantic functions should be continuous supposedly plays a role in the difficulties of giving a fully abstract fixpoint semantics. We show that for a large class of non-deterministic programming languages there is no fully abstract least fixpoint semantics even if one considers arbitrary functions (not necessarily continuous) over arbitrary partial orders (not necessarily complete).     

灯具形态语义设计的编码与解码研究

文章将符号学中的编码解码理论应用于灯具形态设计中,从形状、色彩、材质三方面分析了灯具形态的语义特点,重点研究了灯具形态语义编码与解码的方式与特点。     

A survey on socio-semantic information retrieval

The rise of the Social Web and advances in the Semantic Web provides unprecedented possibilities for the development of novel methods to enhance the information retrieval (IR) process by including varying degrees of semantics. We shed light on the corresponding notion of semantically-enhanced information retrieval by presenting state-of-the art techniques in related research areas. We describe techniques based on the main processes of a typical IR workflow and map them onto three main types of semantics, which vary from formal semantic knowledge representations and content-based semantics to social semantics emerging through usage and user interactions.     

基于图像语义模型识别的道路汽车跟踪

在道路汽车跟踪算法研究中,论文提出了基于场景和运动主体模型的目标跟踪法,通过提取道路与汽车的高层信息属性,建立基于主体运行知识结构与操作方法的语义模型,实施对汽车的运动跟踪。这种目标跟踪算法体现了主体运行意图和操作的知识表达,丰富了目标跟踪算法的研究。