Volume 20, Issue 4

2024 Oct-Dec


1. History-deterministic Timed Automata

Sougata Bose ; Thomas A. Henzinger ; Karoliina Lehtinen ; Sven Schewe ; Patrick Totzke.
We explore the notion of history-determinism in the context of timed automata (TA) over infinite timed words. History-deterministic (HD) automata are those in which nondeterminism can be resolved on the fly, based on the run constructed thus far. History-determinism is a robust property that admits different game-based characterisations, and HD specifications allow for game-based verification without an expensive determinization step. We show that the class of timed $\omega$-languages recognized by HD timed automata strictly extends that of deterministic ones, and is strictly included in those recognised by fully non-deterministic TA. For non-deterministic timed automata it is known that universality is already undecidable for safety/reachability TA. For history-deterministic TA with arbitrary parity acceptance, we show that timed universality, inclusion, and synthesis all remain decidable and are EXPTIME-complete. For the subclass of TA with safety or reachability acceptance, one can decide (in EXPTIME) whether such an automaton is history-deterministic. If so, it can effectively determinized without introducing new automaton states.

2. Pre-measure spaces and pre-integration spaces in predicative Bishop-Cheng measure theory

Iosif Petrakis ; Max Zeuner.
Bishop's measure theory (BMT) is an abstraction of the measure theory of a locally compact metric space $X$, and the use of an informal notion of a set-indexed family of complemented subsets is crucial to its predicative character. The more general Bishop-Cheng measure theory (BCMT) is a constructive version of the classical Daniell approach to measure and integration, and highly impredicative, as many of its fundamental notions, such as the integration space of $p$-integrable functions $L^p$, rely on quantification over proper classes (from the constructive point of view). In this paper we introduce the notions of a pre-measure and pre-integration space, a predicative variation of the Bishop-Cheng notion of a measure space and of an integration space, respectively. Working within Bishop Set Theory (BST), and using the theory of set-indexed families of complemented subsets and set-indexed families of real-valued partial functions within BST, we apply the implicit, predicative spirit of BMT to BCMT. As a first example, we present the pre-measure space of complemented detachable subsets of a set $X$ with the Dirac-measure, concentrated at a single point. Furthermore, we translate in our predicative framework the non-trivial, Bishop-Cheng construction of an integration space from a given measure space, showing that a pre-measure space induces the pre-integration space of simple functions associated to it. Finally, a predicative construction of the canonically integrable […]

3. Formalising the Double-Pushout Approach to Graph Transformation

Robert Söldner ; Detlef Plump.
In this paper, we utilize Isabelle/HOL to develop a formal framework for the basic theory of double-pushout graph transformation. Our work includes defining essential concepts like graphs, morphisms, pushouts, and pullbacks, and demonstrating their properties. We establish the uniqueness of derivations, drawing upon Rosens 1975 research, and verify the Church-Rosser theorem using Ehrigs and Kreowskis 1976 proof, thereby demonstrating the effectiveness of our formalisation approach. The paper details our methodology in employing Isabelle/HOL, including key design decisions that shaped the current iteration. We explore the technical complexities involved in applying higher-order logic, aiming to give readers an insightful perspective into the engaging aspects of working with an Interactive Theorem Prover. This work emphasizes the increasing importance of formal verification tools in clarifying complex mathematical concepts.

4. A higher-order transformation approach to the formalization and analysis of BPMN using graph transformation systems

Tim Kräuter ; Adrian Rutle ; Harald König ; Yngve Lamo.
The Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) is a widely used standard notation for defining intra- and inter-organizational workflows. However, the informal description of the BPMN execution semantics leads to different interpretations of BPMN elements and difficulties in checking behavioral properties. In this article, we propose a formalization of the execution semantics of BPMN that, compared to existing approaches, covers more BPMN elements while also facilitating property checking. Our approach is based on a higher-order transformation from BPMN models to graph transformation systems. To show the capabilities of our approach, we implemented it as an open-source web-based tool.

5. Fair Asynchronous Session Subtyping

Mario Bravetti ; Julien Lange ; Gianluigi Zavattaro.
Session types are widely used as abstractions of asynchronous message passing systems. Refinement for such abstractions is crucial as it allows improvements of a given component without compromising its compatibility with the rest of the system. In the context of session types, the most general notion of refinement is asynchronous session subtyping, which allows message emissions to be anticipated w.r.t. a bounded amount of message consumptions. In this paper we investigate the possibility to anticipate emissions w.r.t. an unbounded amount of consumptions: to this aim we propose to consider fair compliance over asynchronous session types and fair refinement as the relation that preserves it. This allows us to propose a novel variant of session subtyping that leverages the notion of controllability from service contract theory and that is a sound characterisation of fair refinement. In addition, we show that both fair refinement and our novel subtyping are undecidable. We also present a sound algorithm which deals with examples that feature potentially unbounded buffering. Finally, we present an implementation of our algorithm and an empirical evaluation of it on synthetic benchmarks.

6. Asynchronous Session-Based Concurrency: Deadlock-freedom in Cyclic Process Networks

Bas van den Heuvel ; Jorge A. Pérez.
We tackle the challenge of ensuring the deadlock-freedom property for message-passing processes that communicate asynchronously in cyclic process networks. Our contributions are twofold. First, we present Asynchronous Priority-based Classical Processes (APCP), a session-typed process framework that supports asynchronous communication, delegation, and recursion in cyclic process networks. Building upon the Curry-Howard correspondences between linear logic and session types, we establish essential meta-theoretical results for APCP, most notably deadlock freedom. Second, we present a new concurrent $\lambda$-calculus with asynchronous session types, dubbed LASTn. We illustrate LASTn by example and establish its meta-theoretical results; in particular, we show how to soundly transfer the deadlock-freedom guarantee from APCP. To this end, we develop a translation of terms in LASTn into processes in APCP that satisfies a strong formulation of operational correspondence.

7. A cone-theoretic barycenter existence theorem

Jean Goubault-Larrecq ; Xiaodong Jia.
We show that every continuous valuation on a locally convex, locally convex-compact, sober topological cone $\mathfrak{C}$ has a barycenter. This barycenter is unique, and the barycenter map $\beta$ is continuous, hence is the structure map of a $\mathbf V_{\mathrm w}$-algebra, i.e., an Eilenberg-Moore algebra of the extended valuation monad on the category of $T_0$ topological spaces; it is, in fact, the unique $\mathbf V_{\mathrm w}$-algebra that induces the cone structure on $\mathfrak{C}$.