To provide high availability in distributed systems, object replicas allow concurrent updates. Although replicas eventually converge, they may diverge temporarily, for instance when the network fails. This makes it difficult for the developer to reason about the object’s properties, and in particular, to prove invariants over its state. For the subclass of state-based distributed systems, we propose a proof methodology for establishing that a given object maintains a given invariant, taking into account any concurrency control. Our approach allows reasoning about individual operations separately. We demonstrate that our rules are sound, and we illustrate their use with some representative examples. We automate the rule using Boogie, an SMT-based tool.

Proving the safety of highly-available distributed objects

ETAPS is a confederation of several conferences, each with its own Programme Committee and Steering Committee. ETAPS is the most important and visible annual European event related to software sciences. Altogether, more than 500 researchers participate in this event every year. The confederated conferences cover various aspects of software systems, ranging from theoretical foundations to programming language developments, compiler advancements, analysis tools, formal approaches to software engineering, and security.

A gather.town room will be open during the whole conference, which can be found here:

https://gather.town/app/nSgVv0DDYoCkmdkP/ETAPS2021

Password: Luxembourg2021

This can be used to meet in the coffee breaks.

 PDF's of the papers are available on https://etaps.org/2021/programme