Automating first-order relational logic

  • Authors:
  • Daniel Jackson

  • Affiliations:
  • Laboratory for Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 200 Technology Square, Cambridge, Mass

  • Venue:
  • SIGSOFT '00/FSE-8 Proceedings of the 8th ACM SIGSOFT international symposium on Foundations of software engineering: twenty-first century applications
  • Year:
  • 2000

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Abstract

An automatic analysis method for first-order logic with sets and relations is described. A first-order formula is translated to a quantifier-free boolean formula, which has a model when the original formula has a model within a given scope (that is, involving no more than some finite number of atoms). Because the satisfiable formulas that occur in practice tend to have small models, a small scope usually suffices and the analysis is efficient.The paper presents a simple logic and gives a compositional translation scheme. It also reports briefly on experience using the Alloy Analyzer, a tool that implements the scheme.