Grande Salle de CE4
14 November 2011 - 14h00
Sets with Cardinality Constraints in Satisfiability Modulo Theories
by Philippe Suter from EPFL
Abstract: Boolean Algebra with Presburger Arithmetic (BAPA) is a decidable logic that can express constraints on sets of elements and their cardinalities. Problems from verification of complex properties of software often contain fragments that belong to quantifier-free BAPA (QFBAPA). In contrast to many other NP-complete problems (such as quantifier-free first-order logic or linear arithmetic), the applications of QFBAPA to a broader set of problems has so far been hindered by the lack of an efficient implementation that can be used alongside other efficient decision procedures. We overcome these limitations by extending the SMT solver Z3 with the ability to reason about cardinality constraints. At the core of our implementation is an algorithm for automatically decomposing QFBAPA formulas. It alleviates the exponential explosion of considering all Venn regions, significantly improving the tractability of formulas with many set variables. Because it is implemented as a theory plugin, our implementation enables Z3 to prove formulas that use QFBAPA constructs with constructs from other theories that Z3 supports, as well as with quantifiers. We have applied our implementation to the verification of functional programs; we show it can automatically prove formulas that no automated approach was reported to be able to prove before.
