A practical data-flow verification scheme for business processes

Data in business processes becomes more and more important. Current standard languages for process modeling like BPMN 2.0 which include the data flow reflect this. Ensuring the correctness of the data flow in processes is challenging. Model checking, i.e., verifying properties of process models, is a well-known technique to this end. An important part of model checking is the construction of the state space of the model. However, state-space explosion typically is in the way of an effective verification. We study how to overcome this problem in our context by means of reduction. More specifically, we propose a reduction on the level of the process model. To our knowledge, this is new for the data-flow analysis of processes. The core of our approach are so-called regions of the process model that are relevant for the verification of properties describing the data flow. Non-relevant regions are candidates for reduction of the process model, yielding a smaller state space. Our evaluation shows that our approach works well on industrial process models.     

INTELLIGENT CONTROL SYSTEM FOR STREAM SAMPLING

This article introduces an intelligent sampling controller to assist the actions taken by a plant operator to correct sampling conditions. This hybrid system includes a sampling error filter (SEF), a sampling performance indexer (SPI), a sampling correctness inspector (SCI), and a sampling error evaluator (SEE). First, the SEF upgrades the measured variables in a mineral-processing system by material balance. Then, the SPI employs fuzzy logic to assess the sampling performance. In addition, the expert system SCI checks the correctness of the sampling process. Finally, the sampling error is computed by the expert system SEE.     

KNOWLEDGE-BASED ASSESSMENT OF STREAM SAMPLING

This article presents two novel knowledge-based systems for stream-sampling assessment. The first expert system inspects the stream-sampling correctness in mineral-processing plants. It is called the sampling correctness inspector. The second expert system evaluates sampling errors in mineral-processing plants. It is called the sampling error evaluator. The knowledge of both expert systems is collected from the authors' expertise, in addition to other experts' knowledge of sampling mineral-processing streams. These knowledge-based systems take into account the stream properties, the cutter features, and the sampling manner. They were developed and tested successfully.     

Introducing concurrency in sequential Java via laws

Nowadays multi-core processors can be found everywhere. It is well known that one way of improving performance is by parallelization. In this paper we propose a parallelization strategy for Java using algebraic laws. We perform an experiment with two benchmarks and show that our strategy produces a gain similar to a specialized parallel version provided by the Java Grande Benchmark (JGB).     

基于抽象解释的数据迷惑正确性分析

数据迷惑是代码迷惑中重要的一类迷惑变换,在软件保护领域中应用广泛,常被用于防止攻击者对程序进行数据流分析、程序切片等逆向工程攻击。从语义的角度,给出了一种基于抽象解释的数据迷惑正确性的分析方法。首先使用抽象解释理论,从程序语义的角度,对数据迷惑进行形式化描述,用一种语义变换形式化地描述数据迷惑。然后在形式化描述的基础上,由语义变换和语法变换之间的关系,构造得到数据迷惑算法。最后在基于抽象解释的数据迷惑的形式化描述的基础上,对数据迷惑变换的正确性进行分析和讨论。     

On "The Right" Software

Boehm[13,37] is credited to have formulated the "Two Rights" of software: the problem of getting the right software and the problem of getting the software right. The development processes needed to achieve software that is right, to us, requires that a proper study of the application domain be done before a serious requirements study is attempted; and to achieve the right software, that is, software that is correct, to us, requires that a proper engineering degree of formalism be applied to the entire development process; that is, that we re-interpret classical development processes[14]. We shall in this paper focus only on the issue of obtaining the right software. In this paper talk we shall outline what we mean by a proper study of the application domain and how it influences the requirements development.     

一种适用于Diverse Firewall Design的规则集比较算法

随着防火墙规则数目的增多,Diverse Firewall Design设计方法越来越受到重视.在应用该方法进行规则集设计时,多个开发团队会独立地编写若干规则集.由于规则集配置的复杂性,这些规则集有可能不一致.因此,需要使用规则集比较算法,判断这些规则集是否等价,以达到检测出错误配置的目的.然而现有规则集比较算法,实现复杂且效率较低.针对这一问题,提出了一种基于规则交集运算的规则集比较算法.该算法首先使用规则冲突消除算法对规则集进行预处理,将规则集比较问题,转换成多维空间中的图形比较问题;然后利用规则交集运算,判断图形所占区域和颜色是否一致,进而确定规则集是否等价.理论分析和测试表明,算法能检测出规则集之间的不同点,且时空效率优于现有算法.     

An approach to the implementation and verification of abstract data

Abstract

The concept of abstraction can be used to simplify and formalize the design of software. However, most of the existing techniques based on abstraction only consider the control structure but not the data structures in the software. The transformation of a data abstraction, i.e., an abstract data type, to a physical data structure is a complicated process. It is composed of three major parts: a specification technique for describing a data abstraction; a deriving process for deriving the representation of the abstraction based on the specification; and a verification method for verifying the correctness of the specification and the representation of the abstraction. In this paper, we will concentrate on the last two problems, and it is assumed that the algebraic specification technique is used for describing abstract data types. Also, we will use examples to illustrate the use of the proposed approach.     

A complete axiomatic semantics of spawning

Summary In modern imperative languages there are two commonly occurring ways to activate concurrently running tasks,splitting (cobegin...coend) andspawning. The programming language Ada makes use of both forms of task activation. We present a formal system for verifying partial correctness specifications of Ada tasks activated by spawning. The system is based upon a view of tasks as histories of events. We show how the mindset of splitting may be applicable when developing a formal system for reasoning about spawning. The resultant proof system is compositional, and a robust extension of partial correctness proof systems for sequential constructs. A transition model is given for spawning, and the proof system is proven complete in the sense of Cook [10] relative to this model, under certain reasonable assumptions. The specific proof rules given apply to a subset of Ada without real-time and distributed termination. Our approach to task verification applies to other imperative languages besides Ada, and the essential parts of our methodology are applicable to other formal systems besides those based on partial correctness reasoning. Sigurd Meldal is professor of informatics at the University of Bergen. He is interested in techniques and tools based on formal methods for development of concurrent software. His current foci are the investigation of algebraic approaches to nondeterminism, and the participation in the design of a concurrent specification, prototyping and implementation language. The latter supplements formal proof with support for run time control of consistency between concurrent systems as specified and as implemented. Meldal received his cand. real. (1982) and dr. scient. (1986) degrees in informatics from the University of Oslo.This research was supported by a grant from the Norwegian Research Council for Science and the Humanities, by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency/Information Systems Technology Office under the office of Naval Research contract N00014-90-J1232, by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under Grant AFOSR83-0255 and by a Fulbright Scholarship from the US Educational Foundation in Norway