Many important computational structures involve an intricate interplay between algebraic features (given by operations on the underlying set) and relational features (taking account of notions such as order or distance). This paper investigates algebras over relational structures axiomatized by an infinitary Horn theory, which subsume, for example, partial algebras, various incarnations of ordered algebras, quantitative algebras introduced by Mardare, Panangaden, and Plotkin, and their recent extension to generalized metric spaces and lifted algebraic signatures by Mio, Sarkis, and Vignudelli. To this end, we develop the notion of clustered equation, which is inspired by Mardare et al.'s basic conditional equations in the theory of quantitative algebras, at the level of generality of arbitrary relational structures, and we prove that it is equivalent to an abstract categorical form of equation earlier introduced by Milius and Urbat. Our main results are a family of Birkhoff-type variety theorems (classifying the expressive power of clustered equations) and an exactness theorem (classifying abstract equations by a congruence property).
This volume contains the joint post-proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Program Equivalence and Relational Reasoning (PERR) and the 6th Workshop on Horn Clauses for Verification and Synthesis (HCVS), which took place in Prague, Czech Republic on 6th and 7th April, respectively, as affiliated workshops of ETAPS.
Recently, authors have proposed under-approximate logics for reasoning about programs. So far, all such logics have been confined to reasoning about individual program behaviours. Yet there exist many over-approximate relational logics for reasoning about pairs of programs and relating their behaviours. We present the first under-approximate relational logic, for the simple imperative language IMP. We prove our logic is both sound and complete. Additionally, we show how reasoning in this logic can be decomposed into non-relational reasoning in an under-approximate Hoare logic, mirroring Bering…
We add local variables to quantum relational Hoare logic (Unruh, POPL 2019). We derive reasoning rules for supporting local variables (including an improved "adversary rule"). We extended the qrhl-tool for computer-aided verification of qRHL to support local variables and our new reasoning rules.
Dynamic evidence logics are logics for reasoning about the evidence and evidence-based beliefs of agents in a dynamic environment. In this paper, we introduce a family of logics for reasoning about relational evidence: evidence that involves an orderings of states in terms of their relative plausibility. We provide sound and complete axiomatizations for the logics. We also present several evidential actions and prove soundness and completeness for the associated dynamic logics.
We develop an analogue of universal algebra in which generating symbols are interpreted as relations. We prove a variety theorem for these relational algebraic theories, in which we find that their categories of models are precisely the definable categories. The syntax of our relational algebraic theories is string-diagrammatic, and can be seen as an extension of the usual term syntax for algebraic theories.
Relational verification encompasses information flow security, regression verification, translation validation for compilers, and more. Effective alignment of the programs and computations to be related facilitates use of simpler relational invariants and relational procedure specs, which in turn enables automation and modular reasoning. Alignment has been explored in terms of trace pairs, deductive rules of relational Hoare logics (RHL), and several forms of product automata. This article shows how a simple extension of Kleene Algebra with Tests (KAT), called BiKAT, subsumes prior formulation…
Differential privacy is a de facto standard in data privacy with applications in the private and public sectors. Most of the techniques that achieve differential privacy are based on a judicious use of randomness. However, reasoning about randomized programs is difficult and error prone. For this reason, several techniques have been recently proposed to support designer in proving programs differentially private or in finding violations to it. In this work we propose a technique based on symbolic execution for reasoning about differential privacy. Symbolic execution is a classic technique used…
Relational Hoare logics (RHL) provide rules for reasoning about relations between programs. Several RHLs include a rule we call sequential product that infers a relational correctness judgment from judgments of ordinary Hoare logic (HL). Other rules embody sensible patterns of reasoning and have been found useful in practice, but sequential product is relatively complete on its own (with HL). As a more satisfactory way to evaluate RHLs, a notion of alignment completeness is introduced, in terms of the inductive assertion method and product automata. Alignment completeness results are given to …
We propose a new formalism for specifying and reasoning about problems that involve heterogeneous "pieces of information" -- large collections of data, decision procedures of any kind and complexity and connections between them. The essence of our proposal is to lift Codd's relational algebra from operations on relational tables to operations on classes of structures (with recursion), and to add a direction of information propagation. We observe the presence of information propagation in several formalisms for efficient reasoning and use it to express unary negation and operations used in grap…
Relation algebra and its reducts provide us with a strong tool for reasoning about nondeterministic programs and their partial correctness. Demonic calculus, introduced to model the behaviour of a machine where the demon is in control of nondeterminism, has also provided us with an extension of that reasoning to total correctness. We formalise the framework for relational reasoning about total correctness in nondeterministic programs using semigroups with ordinary composition and demonic lattice operations. We show that the class of representable demonic join semigroups is not finitely axiomat…
Fondazione Bruno Kessler（布鲁诺·凯斯勒基金会）；Technische Universität Wien（维也纳工业大学）
Dealing with context dependent knowledge has led to different formalizations of the notion of context. Among them is the Contextualized Knowledge Repository (CKR) framework, which is rooted in description logics but links on the reasoning side strongly to logic programs and Answer Set Programming (ASP) in particular. The CKR framework caters for reasoning with defeasible axioms and exceptions in contexts, which was extended to knowledge inheritance across contexts in a coverage (specificity) hierarchy. However, the approach supports only this single type of contextual relation and the reasonin…
