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Module

CSC3323 : Software Verification Technologies

  • Offered for Year: 2020/21
  • Module Leader(s): Dr Leo Freitas
  • Teaching Assistant: Mr Chris Napier
  • Owning School: Computing
  • Teaching Location: Newcastle City Campus
Semesters
Semester 2 Credit Value: 10
ECTS Credits: 5.0

Aims

To train students with practical aspects of formal modelling and verification technology as parts of a well-founded set of tools and techniques within software engineering.

Outline Of Syllabus

1.       Background
1.1.       The nature of software (SW) verification; verification principles (correctness, concurrency, abstraction, refinement, design decisions, documented assumptions, model-based testing)
1.2.       Understanding expertise required and costs involved; identifying the right technique to the task at hand.
2.       Modelling and Specification
2.1.       From a requirements document and produce an initial abstract specification of the problem.
2.2.       Elicit properties of interest from these requirements as formal consistency conditions, and make a specification of them that is amenable to analysis and verification.
2.3.       Foundations of formal modelling: propositional and predicate logic, data types and invariants; state-based models; mathematical toolkits.
2.4.       Propose design decisions as improved specifications; designs must be amenable to proof and consistency checking of desired properties;
2.5.       Possibly propose code-level contracts from formal design.
3.       Verification & Validation
3.1.       Understand verification support systems able to discharge formal consistency conditions from modelling activities
3.2.       Understand what it means for one specification to be a design refinement of another by establishing a link from the requirements to code-contracts
3.3.       Study alternative (to formal) techniques aiming at understanding the costs and conditions under which to undertake a formal or rigorous development process.
3.4.       Understand the importance of automated proof support and proof engineering (i.e. the process of mechanising a complex model)
3.5.       Metrics for complexity, reliability, expertise, time costs

Teaching Methods

Module leaders are revising this content in light of the Covid 19 restrictions.
Revised and approved detail information will be available by 17 August.

Assessment Methods

Module leaders are revising this content in light of the Covid 19 restrictions.
Revised and approved detail information will be available by 17 August.

Reading Lists

Timetable