TITLE: Automated Error-Detection and Repair for Compositional Software Specifications
SPEAKER: Dalal Alrajeh (Imperial College)

ABSTRACT:

The complexity of error diagnosis in requirements specifications, already high, is increased 
when requirements refer to various system components, on whose interaction the system's aims depend.
Further, finding causes of error, and ways of overcoming them, cannot easily be achieved without a systematic methodology. 
This has led researchers to explore the combined use of  verification and machine-learning to support automated software 
analysis and repair. However, existing approaches have been limited  by using formalisms in which modularity and compositionality cannot be
explicitly expressed. 


 In this talk I will present our approach (recently published in SEFM'14) to overcome this limitation. We define a translation from a representative 
 process algebra, Finite State Processes, into the action language C+.  This enables forms
 of verification not supported by previous methods.  We then use a logic-programming equivalent of EC+, to which
 we apply  inductive logic programming for learning repairs to system components  while ensuring no new errors are  
introduced and interactions with other components are maintained.  These two phases are iterated until a correct specification is reached, 
enabling rigorous and scalable support for automated analysis and repair of component-based specifications.