Challenges Of Software Verification

This book provides an overview about the open challenges in software verification. Software verification is a branch of software engineering aiming at guaranteeing that software applications satisfy some requirements of interest. Over the years, the software verification community has proposed and considered several techniques: abstract interpretation, data-flow analysis, type systems, model checking are just a few examples. The theoretical advances have been always motivated by practical challenges that have led to an equal evolution of both these sides of software verification. Indeed, several verification tools have been proposed by the research community and any software application, in order to guarantee that certain software requirements are met, needs to integrate a verification phase in its life cycle, independently of the context of application or software size. This book is aimed at collecting contributions discussing recent advances in facing open challenges in software verification, relying on a broad spectrum of verification techniques. This book collects contributions ranging from theoretical to practical arguments, and it is aimed at both researchers in software verification and their practitioners.

This book fills the critical need for an in-depth technical reference providing the methods and techniques for building and maintaining confidence in many varities of system software. The intent is to help develop reliable answers to such critical questions as: 1) Are we building the right software for the need? and 2) Are we building the software right? Software Verification and Validation: An Engineering and Scientific Approach is structured for research scientists and practitioners in industry. The book is also suitable as a secondary textbook for advanced-level students in computer science and engineering.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Verified Software, VSTTE 2020, and the 13th International Workshop on Numerical Software Verification, NSV 2020, held in Los Angeles, CA, USA, in July 2020. Due to COVID-19 pandemic the conference was held virtually. The 13 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 21 submissions. The papers describe large-scale verification efforts that involve collaboration, theory unification, tool integration, and formalized domain knowledge as well as novel experiments and case studies evaluating verification techniques and technologies. The conference was co-located with the 32nd International Conference on Computer-Aided Verification (CAV 2020).

This book presents reflections on the occasion of 20 years on the KeY project that focuses on deductive software verification. Since the inception of the KeY project two decades ago, the area of deductive verification has evolved considerably. Support for real world programming languages by deductive program verification tools has become prevalent. This required to overcome significant theoretical and technical challenges to support advanced software engineering and programming concepts. The community became more interconnected with a competitive, but friendly and supportive environment. We took the 20-year anniversary of KeY as an opportunity to invite researchers, inside and outside of the project, to contribute to a book capturing some state-of-the-art developments in the field. We received thirteen contributions from recognized experts of the field addressing the latest challenges. The topics of the contributions range from tool development, effciency and usability considerations to novel specification and verification methods. This book should offer the reader an up-to-date impression of the current state of art in deductive verification, and we hope, inspire her to contribute to the field and to join forces. We are looking forward to meeting you at the next conference, to listen to your research talks and the resulting fruitful discussions and collaborations.

Computing systems are employed in the health care environment in efforts to increase reliability of care and reduce costs. Software verification and validation (V&V) is an aid in determining that the software requirements are implemented correctly and completely and are traceable to system requirements. It helps to ensure that those system functions controlled by software are secure, reliable, and maintainable. Software V&V is conducted throughout the planning, development and maintenance of software systems, including knowledge based systems, and may assist in assuring appropriate reuse of software.

This textbook overviews the whole spectrum of formal methods and techniques that are aimed at verifying correctness of software, and how they can be used in practice. It focuses on techniques whereby the user has some control over the properties that are being checked. More specifically, it shows a wide range of techniques covering the whole spectrum: from abstract system design to implementation, from bug finding to full proofs, and from techniques that are push-button by design and give a yes/no answer to techniques that require the user to provide explicit guidance to steer the analysis process. Topics and features: Covers a broad spectrum of software verification techniques, from model checking to annotation checking Provides numerous examples to demonstrate the techniques Focuses on how techniques can be used (and the main ideas behind how they work), as opposed to how they are implemented Explains strengths and weaknesses of the techniques, providing insight into when to use which technique in practice This unique textbook has been written primarily for master’s level students in computer science studying embedded systems and specializing in software technology. The book will also be of interest for students studying cyber security and data science technology, as well as for system or software developers interested in techniques that offer formal guarantees about software.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th International Haifa Verification Conference, HVC 2013, held in Haifa, Israel in November 2013. The 24 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 49 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on SAT and SMT-based verification, software testing, supporting dynamic verification, specification and coverage, abstraction and model presentation.

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed proceedings of the 8th International Haifa Verification Conference, HVC 2012, held in Haifa, Israel in November 2012. The 18 revised full papers presented together with 3 poster presentations were carefully reviewed and selected from 36 submissions. They focus on the future directions of testing and verification for hardware, software, and complex hybrid systems.