Verified Software: Theories, Tools, Experiments First IFIP TC 2/WG 2.3 Conference, VSTTE 2005, Zurich, Switzerland, October 10-13, 2005, Revised Selected Papers and Discussions

A Step Towards Verified Software Worries about the reliability of software are as old as software itself; techniques for allaying these worries predate even James King’s 1969 thesis on “A program verifier. ” What gives the whole topic a new urgency is the conjunction of three phenomena: the blitz-like spread of software-rich systems to control ever more facets of our world and our lives; our growing impatience with deficiencies; and the development—proceeding more slowly, alas, than the other two trends—of techniques to ensure and verify software quality. In 2002 Tony Hoare, one of the most distinguished contributors to these advances over the past four decades, came to the conclusion that piecemeal efforts are no longer sufficient and proposed a “Grand Challenge” intended to achieve, over 15 years, the production of a verifying compiler: a tool that while processing programs would also guarantee their adherence to specified properties of correctness, robustness, safety, security and other desirable properties. As Hoare sees it, this endeavor is not a mere research project, as might normally be carried out by one team or a small consortium of teams, but a momentous endeavor, comparable in its scope to the successful mission to send a man to the moon or to the sequencing of the human genome.

Verified Software: Theories, Tools, Experiments Vision of a Grand Challenge Project.- Verification Tools.- Towards a Worldwide Verification Technology.- It Is Time to Mechanize Programming Language Metatheory.- Methods and Tools for Formal Software Engineering.- Guaranteeing Correctness.- The Verified Software Challenge: A Call for a Holistic Approach to Reliability.- A Mini Challenge: Build a Verifiable Filesystem.- A Constructive Approach to Correctness, Exemplified by a Generator for Certified Java Card Applets.- Some Interdisciplinary Observations about Getting the “Right” Specification.- Software Engineering Aspects.- Software Verification and Software Engineering a Practitioner’s Perspective.- Decomposing Verification Around End-User Features.- Verifying Object-Oriented Programming.- Automatic Verification of Strongly Dynamic Software Systems.- Reasoning about Object Structures Using Ownership.- Modular Reasoning in Object-Oriented Programming.- Scalable Specification and Reasoning: Challenges for Program Logic.- Programming Language and Methodology Aspects.- Lessons from the JML Project.- The Spec# Programming System: Challenges and Directions.- Integrating Static Checking and Interactive Verification: Supporting Multiple Theories and Provers in Verification.- Components.- Automated Test Generation and Verified Software.- Dependent Types, Theorem Proving, and Applications for a Verifying Compiler.- Generating Programs Plus Proofs by Refinement.- Static Analysis.- The Verification Grand Challenge and Abstract Interpretation.- WYSINWYX: What You See Is Not What You eXecute.- Implications of a Data Structure Consistency Checking System.- Towards the Integration of Symbolic and Numerical Static Analysis.- Design, Analysis and Tools.- Reliable Software SystemsDesign: Defect Prevention, Detection, and Containment.- Trends and Challenges in Algorithmic Software Verification.- Model Checking: Back and Forth between Hardware and Software.- Computational Logical Frameworks and Generic Program Analysis Technologies.- Formal Techniques.- A Mechanized Program Verifier.- Verifying Design with Proof Scores.- Integrating Theories and Techniques for Program Modelling, Design and Verification.- Eiffel as a Framework for Verification.- Position Papers.- Can We Build an Automatic Program Verifier? Invariant Proofs and Other Challenges.- Verified Software: The Real Grand Challenge.- Linking the Meaning of Programs to What the Compiler Can Verify.- Scalable Software Model Checking Using Design for Verification.- Model-Checking Software Using Precise Abstractions.- Toasters, Seat Belts, and Inferring Program Properties.- On the Formal Development of Safety-Critical Software.- Verify Your Runs.- Specified Blocks.- A Case for Specification Validation.- Some Verification Issues at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.- Performance Validation on Multicore Mobile Devices.- Tool Integration for Reasoned Programming.- Decision Procedures for the Grand Challenge.- The Challenge of Hardware-Software Co-verification.- From the How to the What.- An Overview of Separation Logic.- A Perspective on Program Verification.- Meta-Logical Frameworks and Formal Digital Libraries.- Languages, Ambiguity, and Verification.- The Importance of Non-theorems and Counterexamples in Program Verification.- Regression Verification - A Practical Way to Verify Programs.- Programming with Proofs: Language-Based Approaches to Totally Correct Software.- The Role of Model-Based Testing.- Abstraction of Graph Transformation Systems by Temporal Logic and Its Verification.- Program Verification by Using DISCOVERER.- Constraint Solving and Symbolic Execution.