Relational Programs

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CCR-99000922 Bastani, Farokh B. The University of Texas at DallasThe increasing automation of critical applications is imposing increasing demands on software capabilities and assurance levels. To handle these challenges, several methods have been proposed to decompose requirements specifications into disjoint pieces that can be implemented independently. However, most of these methods do not directly facilitate the assessment of the resulting system. This research focuses on IDEAL (Independently Developable End-user Assessable Logical) components, i.e., components that can be analyzed, developed, and evaluated independently by the end-user. To compose a system of IDEAL components, each component is relational (returns all possible outputs for a given input). This approach has severalsignificant advantages, including high reliability and safety assurance, automated composition, and support for multiparadigm control strategies. A formal foundation for the existence of relational programs for several classes of applications will be developed. A library of heuristic rules, data types, operations, and coordination schemes will be developed to facilitate the writing of efficient relational programs. Methods will be developed to infer the properties (performance, reliability, safety, and stability) of a system of IDEAL components from the properties of its components. These will result in a rigorous and practical approach for achieving certifiable high assurance for critical applications.