arXiv subjects

Giovanni Bernardi

Publications and source records attributed to Giovanni Bernardi.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

A uniform characterisation of the (a)synchronous must-preorder

In the setting of message passing software, De Nicola and Hennessy must-preorder defines when a program improves on another one. Since this preorder does not come equipped with a viable proof method, using it requires an alternative relation that characterises it. The literature presents at least four different definitions of such alternative preorders, depending on whether communication is synchronous or asynchronous and on whether there is value-passing or not. The existence of these different definitions complicates the overall theory, hinders the development of tools, and, upon the whole, suggests a lack of understanding of the properties necessary and sufficient to reason on the must-preorder. This paper presents the first alternative characterisation that works at least in all the four settings mentioned above. We achieve this result thanks to an axiomatic approach that is calculus independent, by highlighting the role of blocking and non-blocking actions, and by introducing the novel notion of label abstraction. Label abstractions capture the essence of safe substitutivity w.r.t. interactions, and they let us obtain a unique proof of soundness and a unique proof of completeness that work in all the mentioned settings. We believe this generalises and simplifies the overall theory, while letting us present the existing results in a uniform way. Our proofs are constructive and our result is entirely mechanised in Rocq.

cs.LO↗

arXiv2026

Software is infrastructure: failures, successes, costs, and the case for formal verification

In this chapter we outline the role that software has in modern society, along with the staggering costs of poor software quality. To lay this bare, we recall the costs of some of the major software failures that happened during the last 40 years. We argue that these costs justify researching, studying and applying formal software verification and in particular program analysis. This position is supported by successful industrial experiences.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2025

Constructive characterisations of the must-preorder for asynchrony

De Nicola and Hennessy's must-preorder is a contextual refinement which states that a server q refines a server p if all clients satisfied by p are also satisfied by q. Owing to the universal quantification over clients, this definition does not yield a practical proof method for the must-preorder, and alternative characterisations are necessary to reason over it. Finding these characterisations for asynchronous semantics, i.e. where outputs are non-blocking, has thus far proven to be a challenge, usually tackled via ad-hoc definitions. We show that the standard characterisations of the must-preorder carry over as they stand to asynchronous communication, if servers are enhanced to act as forwarders, i.e. they can input any message as long as they store it back into the shared buffer. Our development is constructive, is completely mechanised in Coq, and is independent of any calculus: our results pertain to Selinger output-buffered agents with feedback. This is a class of Labelled Transition Systems that captures programs that communicate via a shared unordered buffer, as in asynchronous CCS or the asynchronous pi-calculus. We show that the standard coinductive characterisation lets us prove in Coq that concrete programs are related by the must-preorder. Finally, our proofs show that Brouwer's bar induction principle is a useful technique to reason on liveness preserving program transformations.

cs.LO↗

arXiv2016

Using higher-order contracts to model session types

Session types are used to describe and structure interactions between independent processes in distributed systems. Higher-order types are needed in order to properly structure delegation of responsibility between processes. In this paper we show that higher-order web-service contracts can be used to provide a fully-abstract model of recursive higher-order session types. The model is set-theoretic, in the sense that the meaning of a contract is given in terms of the set of contracts with which it complies. The proof of full-abstraction depends on a novel notion of the complement of a contract. This in turn gives rise to an alternative to the type duality commonly used in systems for type-checking session types. We believe that the notion of complement captures more faithfully the behavioural intuition underlying type duality.

cs.LO↗

arXiv2015

Mutually Testing Processes

In the standard testing theory of DeNicola-Hennessy one process is considered to be a refinement of another if every test guaranteed by the former is also guaranteed by the latter. In the domain of web services this has been recast, with processes viewed as servers and tests as clients. In this way the standard refinement preorder between servers is determined by their ability to satisfy clients. But in this setting there is also a natural refinement preorder between clients, determined by their ability to be satisfied by servers. In more general settings where there is no distinction between clients and servers, but all processes are peers, there is a further refinement preorder based on the mutual satisfaction of peers. We give a uniform account of these three preorders. In particular we give two characterisations. The first is behavioural, in terms of traces and ready sets. The second, for finite processes, is equational.

cs.LO↗