An Integrated Approach to High Integrity Software Verification

  • Authors:

  • Andrew Ireland;Bill J. Ellis;Andrew Cook;Roderick Chapman;Janet Barnes

  • Affiliations:

  • School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland EH14 4AS;School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland EH14 4AS;School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland EH14 4AS;Praxis High Integrity Systems Ltd, Bath, England BA1 1PX;Praxis High Integrity Systems Ltd, Bath, England BA1 1PX

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Automated Reasoning
  • Year:
  • 2006

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Abstract

Using automated reasoning techniques, we tackle the niche activity of proving that a program is free from run-time exceptions. Such a property is particularly valuable in high integrity software, for example, safety- or security-critical applications. The context for our work is the SPARK Approach for the development of high integrity software. The SPARK Approach provides a significant degree of automation in proving exception freedom. Where this automation fails, however, the programmer is burdened with the task of interactively constructing a proof and possibly also having to supply auxiliary program annotations. We minimize this burden by increasing the automation, through an integration of proof planning and a program analysis oracle. We advocate a `cooperative' integration, where proof-failure analysis directly constrains the search for auxiliary program annotations. The approach has been successfully tested on industrial data.