Texts in Theoretical Computer Science. An EATCS Series – serie

A decision procedure is an algorithm that, given a decision problem, terminates with a correct yes/no answer. Here, the authors focus on theories that are expressive enough to model real problems, but are still decidable. Specifically, the book concentrates on decision procedures for first-order theories that are commonly used in automated verification and reasoning, theorem-proving, compiler optimization and operations research. The techniques described in the book draw from fields such as graph theory and logic, and are routinely used in industry.The authors introduce the basic terminology of SAT, Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT) and the DPLL(T) framework. Then, in separate chapters, they study decision procedures for propositional logic; equalities and uninterpreted functions; linear arithmetic; bit vectors; arrays; pointer logic; and quantified formulas. They also study the problem of deciding combined theories based on the Nelson-Oppen procedure.Thefirst edition of this book was adopted as a textbook in courses worldwide. It was published in 2008 and the field now called SMT was then in its infancy, without the standard terminology and canonic algorithms it has now; this second edition reflects these changes. It brings forward the DPLL(T) framework. It also expands the SAT chapter with modern SAT heuristics, and includes a new section about incremental satisfiability, and the related Constraints Satisfaction Problem (CSP).  The chapter about quantifiers was expanded with a new section about general quantification using E-matching and a section about Effectively Propositional Reasoning (EPR). The book also includes a new chapter on the application of SMT in industrial software engineering and in computational biology, coauthored by Nikolaj Bjørner and Leonardo de Moura, and Hillel Kugler, respectively.Each chapter includes a detailed bibliography and exercises. Lecturers’ slides and a C++ library for rapid prototyping of decision procedures are available from the authors’ website.

Software programs are formal entities with precise meanings independent of their programmers, so the transition from ideas to programs necessarily involves a formalisation at some point.The first part of this graduate-level introduction to formal methods develops an understanding of what constitutes formal methods and what their place is in Software Engineering. It also introduces logics as languages to describe reasoning and the process algebra CSP as a language to represent behaviours. The second part offers specification and testing methods for formal development of software, based on the modelling languages CASL and UML. The third part takes the reader into the application domains of normative documents, human machine interfaces, and security.  Use of notations and formalisms is uniform throughout the book.Topics and features:Explains foundations, and introduces specification, verification, and testing methodsExploresvarious application domainsPresents realistic and practical examples, illustrating conceptsBrings together contributions from highly experienced educators and researchers Offers modelling and analysis methods for formal development of softwareSuitable for graduate and undergraduate courses in software engineering, this uniquely practical textbook will also be of value to students in informatics, as well as to scientists and practical engineers,  who want to learn about or work more effectively with formal theories and methods.Markus Roggenbach is a Professor in the Dept. of Computer Science of Swansea University. Antonio Cerone is an Associate Professor in the Dept. of Computer Science of Nazarbayev University, Nur-Sultan. Bernd-Holger Schlingloff is a Professor in the Institut für Informatik of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Gerardo Schneider is a Professor in the Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering of University of Gothenburg. Siraj Ahmed Shaikh is a Professor in the Institute for Future Transport and Cities of Coventry University.The companion site for the book offers additional resources, including further material for selected chapters, prepared lab classes, a list of errata, slides and teaching material, and virtual machines with preinstalled tools and resources for hands-on experience with examples from the book. The URL is: https://sefm-book.github.io

Software programs are formal entities with precise meanings independent of their programmers, so the transition from ideas to programs necessarily involves a formalisation at some point.The first part of this graduate-level introduction to formal methods develops an understanding of what constitutes formal methods and what their place is in Software Engineering. It also introduces logics as languages to describe reasoning and the process algebra CSP as a language to represent behaviours. The second part offers specification and testing methods for formal development of software, based on the modelling languages CASL and UML. The third part takes the reader into the application domains of normative documents, human machine interfaces, and security.  Use of notations and formalisms is uniform throughout the book.Topics and features:Explains foundations, and introduces specification, verification, and testing methodsExploresvarious application domainsPresents realistic and practical examples, illustrating conceptsBrings together contributions from highly experienced educators and researchers Offers modelling and analysis methods for formal development of softwareSuitable for graduate and undergraduate courses in software engineering, this uniquely practical textbook will also be of value to students in informatics, as well as to scientists and practical engineers,  who want to learn about or work more effectively with formal theories and methods.Markus Roggenbach is a Professor in the Dept. of Computer Science of Swansea University. Antonio Cerone is an Associate Professor in the Dept. of Computer Science of Nazarbayev University, Nur-Sultan. Bernd-Holger Schlingloff is a Professor in the Institut für Informatik of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Gerardo Schneider is a Professor in the Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering of University of Gothenburg. Siraj Ahmed Shaikh is a Professor in the Institute for Future Transport and Cities of Coventry University.The companion site for the book offers additional resources, including further material for selected chapters, prepared lab classes, a list of errata, slides and teaching material, and virtual machines with preinstalled tools and resources for hands-on experience with examples from the book. The URL is: https://sefm-book.github.io

This book presents the fundamentals of concurrency theory with clarity and rigor. The authors start with the semantic structure, namely labelled transition systems, which provides us with the means and the tools to express processes, to compose them, and to prove properties they enjoy. The rest of the book relies on Milner's Calculus of Communicating Systems, tailored versions of which are used to study various notions of equality between systems, and to investigate in detail the expressive power of the models considered.The authors proceed from very basic results to increasingly complex issues, with many examples and exercises that help to reveal the many subtleties of the topic. The book is suitable for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in computer science and engineering, and scientists engaged with theories of concurrency.

This book presents the fundamentals of concurrency theory with clarity and rigor. The authors start with the semantic structure, namely labelled transition systems, which provides us with the means and the tools to express processes, to compose them, and to prove properties they enjoy. The rest of the book relies on Milner's Calculus of Communicating Systems, tailored versions of which are used to study various notions of equality between systems, and to investigate in detail the expressive power of the models considered.The authors proceed from very basic results to increasingly complex issues, with many examples and exercises that help to reveal the many subtleties of the topic. The book is suitable for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in computer science and engineering, and scientists engaged with theories of concurrency.

This textbook explains online computation in different settings, with particular emphasis on randomization and advice complexity. These settings are analyzed for various online problems such as the paging problem, the k-server problem, job shop scheduling, the knapsack problem, the bit guessing problem, and problems on graphs.This book is appropriate for undergraduate and graduate students of computer science, assuming a basic knowledge in algorithmics and discrete mathematics. Also researchers will find this a valuable reference for the recent field of advice complexity.

This book presents in their basic form the most important models of computation, their basic programming paradigms, and their mathematical descriptions, both concrete and abstract. Each model is accompanied by relevant formal techniques for reasoning on it and for proving some properties. After preliminary chapters that introduce the notions of structure and meaning, semantic methods, inference rules, and logic programming, the authors arrange their chapters into parts on IMP, a simple imperative language; HOFL, a higher-order functional language; concurrent, nondeterministic and interactive models; and probabilistic/stochastic models.The authors have class-tested the book content over many years, and it will be valuable for graduate and advanced undergraduate students of theoretical computer science and distributed systems, and for researchers in this domain. Each chapter of the book concludes with a list of exercises addressing the key techniques introduced, solutions to selected exercises are offered at the end of the book.

This book explains the state-of-the-art algorithms used to simulate biological dynamics. Each technique is theoretically introduced and applied to a set of modeling cases. Starting from basic simulation algorithms, the book also introduces more advanced techniques that support delays, diffusion in space, or that are based on hybrid simulation strategies.This is a valuable self-contained resource for graduate students and practitioners in computer science, biology and bioinformatics. An appendix covers the mathematical background, and the authors include further reading sections in each chapter.

This textbook explains online computation in different settings, with particular emphasis on randomization and advice complexity. These settings are analyzed for various online problems such as the paging problem, the k-server problem, job shop scheduling, the knapsack problem, the bit guessing problem, and problems on graphs.This book is appropriate for undergraduate and graduate students of computer science, assuming a basic knowledge in algorithmics and discrete mathematics. Also researchers will find this a valuable reference for the recent field of advice complexity.

This book presents in their basic form the most important models of computation, their basic programming paradigms, and their mathematical descriptions, both concrete and abstract. Each model is accompanied by relevant formal techniques for reasoning on it and for proving some properties. After preliminary chapters that introduce the notions of structure and meaning, semantic methods, inference rules, and logic programming, the authors arrange their chapters into parts on IMP, a simple imperative language; HOFL, a higher-order functional language; concurrent, nondeterministic and interactive models; and probabilistic/stochastic models.The authors have class-tested the book content over many years, and it will be valuable for graduate and advanced undergraduate students of theoretical computer science and distributed systems, and for researchers in this domain. Each chapter of the book concludes with a list of exercises addressing the key techniques introduced, solutions to selected exercises are offered at the end of the book.

This book explains the state-of-the-art algorithms used to simulate biological dynamics. Each technique is theoretically introduced and applied to a set of modeling cases. Starting from basic simulation algorithms, the book also introduces more advanced techniques that support delays, diffusion in space, or that are based on hybrid simulation strategies.This is a valuable self-contained resource for graduate students and practitioners in computer science, biology and bioinformatics. An appendix covers the mathematical background, and the authors include further reading sections in each chapter.

Reactive systems are becoming more and more important for essentially all areas of technical and professional activities as well as for many areas of everyday life. The design of these systems is a great challenge and requires sound compromises between safety and time-to-market. To meet these needs, early design phases nowadays include verification of given specifications against system descriptions to find potential design errors as early as possible. This book is devoted to the foundation of the most popular formal methods for the specification and verification of reactive systems. In particular, the µ-calculus, omega-automata, and temporal logics are covered in full detail; their relationship and state-of-the-art verification procedures based on these formal approaches are presented. Furthermore, the advantages and disadvantages of the formalisms from particular points of view are analyzed. Most results are given with detailed proofs, so that the presentation is almost self-contained. This book is targeted to advanced students, lecturers and researchers in the area of formal methods.

Finite model theory,as understoodhere, is an areaof mathematicallogic that has developed in close connection with applications to computer science, in particular the theory of computational complexity and database theory. One of the fundamental insights of mathematical logic is that our understanding of mathematical phenomena is enriched by elevating the languages we use to describe mathematical structures to objects of explicit study. If mathematics is the science of patterns, then the media through which we discern patterns, as well as the structures in which we discern them, command our attention. It isthis aspect oflogicwhichis mostprominentin model theory,“thebranchof mathematical logic which deals with the relation between a formal language and its interpretations”. No wonder, then, that mathematical logic, and ?nite model theory in particular, should ?nd manifold applications in computer science: from specifying programs to querying databases, computer science is rife with phenomena whose understanding requires close attention to the interaction between language and structure. This volume gives a broadoverviewof some central themes of ?nite model theory: expressive power, descriptive complexity, and zero–one laws, together with selected applications to database theory and arti?cial intelligence, es- cially constraint databases and constraint satisfaction problems. The ?nal chapter provides a concise modern introduction to modal logic,which emp- sizes the continuity in spirit and technique with ?nite model theory.

Preface Due to the development of hardware technologies (such as VLSI) in the early 1980s, the interest in parallel and distributive computing has been rapidly growingandinthelate1980sthestudyofparallelalgorithmsandarchitectures became one of the main topics in computer science. To bring the topic to educatorsandstudents,severalbooksonparallelcomputingwerewritten. The involvedtextbook“IntroductiontoParallelAlgorithmsandArchitectures”by F. Thomson Leighton in 1992 was one of the milestones in the development of parallel architectures and parallel algorithms. But in the last decade or so the main interest in parallel and distributive computing moved from the design of parallel algorithms and expensive parallel computers to the new distributive reality – the world of interconnected computers that cooperate (often asynchronously) in order to solve di?erent tasks. Communication became one of the most frequently used terms of computer science because of the following reasons: (i) Considering the high performance of current computers, the communi- tion is often moretime consuming than the computing time of processors. As a result, the capacity of communication channels is the bottleneck in the execution of many distributive algorithms. (ii) Many tasks in the Internet are pure communication tasks. We do not want to compute anything, we only want to execute some information - change or to extract some information as soon as possible and as cheaply as possible. Also, we do not have a central database involving all basic knowledge. Instead, wehavea distributed memorywherethe basickno- edgeisdistributedamongthelocalmemoriesofalargenumberofdi?erent computers. The growing importance of solving pure communication tasks in the - terconnected world is the main motivation forwriting this book.

The aim of this textbook is not only to provide an elegant route through the theoretical fundamentals of computer science, but also to show that theoretical computer science is a fascinating discipline, full of spectacular contributions and miracles, and depth in research, and yet directly applicable. Thus, we aim to excite people about its study. To achieve these goals we do not hesitate to take a lot of space to present motivations, and especially to give the informal development of crucial ideas and concepts and their transparent, but rigorous presentation.An additional aim is to present the development of the computer scientist's way of thinking, so we do not restrict this book to the classic areas like computability and automata theory but we also present fundamental concepts such as approximation and randomization in algorithmics and we explain the basic ideas of cryptography and interconnection network design.

The book contains a completely new presentation of classical results in the field of Lambda Calculus, together with new results. The text is unique in that it presents a new calculus (Parametric Lambda Calculus) which can be instantiated to obtain already known lambda-calculi. Some properties, which in the literature have been proved separately for different calculi, can be proved once for the Parametric one. The lambda calculi are presented from a Computer Science point of view, with a particular emphasis on their semantics, both operational and denotational.

Coq is an interactive proof assistant for the development of mathematical theories and formally certified software. It is based on a theory called the calculus of inductive constructions, a variant of type theory.This book provides a pragmatic introduction to the development of proofs and certified programs using Coq. With its large collection of examples and exercises it is an invaluable tool for researchers, students, and engineers interested in formal methods and the development of zero-fault software.

The book addresses ways and means of organizing computations, highlighting the relationship between algorithms and the basic mechanisms and runtime structures necessary to execute them using machines. It completely abstracts from concrete programming languages and machine architectures, taking instead the lambda calculus as the basic programming and program execution model to design various abstract machines for its correct implementation. This book takes a lambda calculus approach to organizing computations. It sets out with a brief introduction to lambda calculus, describes a variant of the classical SECD-machine as a basic interpreter for the lambda calculus, and in the main part continues with fully normalizing abstract lambda calculus machines, of which some are interpreting and some execute compiled code.

The art, craft, discipline, logic, practice, and science of developing large-scale software products needs a believable, professional base. The textbooks in this three-volume set combine informal, engineeringly sound practice with the rigour of formal, mathematics-based approaches.Volume 1 covers the basic principles and techniques of formal methods abstraction and modelling. First this book provides a sound, but simple basis of insight into discrete mathematics: numbers, sets, Cartesians, types, functions, the Lambda Calculus, algebras, and mathematical logic. Then it trains its readers in basic property- and model-oriented specification principles and techniques. The model-oriented concepts that are common to such specification languages as B, VDM-SL, and Z are explained here using the RAISE specification language (RSL). This book then covers the basic principles of applicative (functional), imperative, and concurrent (parallel) specification programming. Finally, the volume contains a comprehensive glossary of software engineering, and extensive indexes and references.These volumes are suitable for self-study by practicing software engineers and for use in university undergraduate and graduate courses on software engineering. Lecturers will be supported with a comprehensive guide to designing modules based on the textbooks, with solutions to many of the exercises presented, and with a complete set of lecture slides.

The art, craft, discipline, logic, practice and science of developing large-scale software products needs a professional base. The textbooks in this three-volume set combine informal, engineeringly sound approaches with the rigor of formal, mathematics-based approaches.This volume covers the basic principles and techniques of specifying systems and languages. It deals with modelling the semiotics (pragmatics, semantics and syntax of systems and languages), modelling spatial and simple temporal phenomena, and such specialized topics as modularity (incl. UML class diagrams), Petri nets, live sequence charts, statecharts, and temporal logics, including the duration calculus. Finally, the book presents techniques for interpreter and compiler development of functional, imperative, modular and parallel programming languages.This book is targeted at late undergraduate to early graduate university students, and researchers of programming methodologies. Vol. 1of this series is a prerequisite text.

The art, craft, discipline, logic, practice, and science of developing large-scale software products needs a believable, professional base. The textbooks in this three-volume set combine informal, engineeringly sound practice with the rigour of formal, mathematics-based approaches.Volume 3 is based on the maxim: "Before software can be designed its requirements must be well understood, and before the requirements can be expressed properly the domain of the application must be well understood." This book covers the process from the development of domain descriptions, via the derivation of requirements prescriptions from domain models, to the refinement of requirements into software designs, i.e., architectures and component design. Emphasis is placed on what goes into proper domain descriptions and requirements prescriptions, how one acquires and analyses the domain knowledge and requirements expectations, and how one validates and verifies domain and requirements models.The reader can take an informal route through Vol. 3, and this would be suitable for undergraduate courses on software engineering. Advanced students, lecturers, and researchers may instead follow the formal route through Vol. 3, and in this case Vol. 1 is a prerequisite text. Lecturers will be supported with a comprehensive guide to designing modules based on the textbooks, with solutions to many of the exercises presented, and with a complete set of lecture slides.

Finite model theory is an area of mathematical logic that grew out of computer science applications. The main sources of motivational examples for finite model theory are found in database theory, computational complexity, and formal languages, although in recent years connections with other areas, such as formal methods and verification, and artificial intelligence, have been discovered. The birth of finite model theory is often identified with Trakhtenbrot's result from 1950 stating that validity over finite models is not recursively enumerable; in other words, completeness fails over finite models. The tech­ nique of the proof, based on encoding Turing machine computations as finite structures, was reused by Fagin almost a quarter century later to prove his cel­ ebrated result that put the equality sign between the class NP and existential second-order logic, thereby providing a machine-independent characterization of an important complexity class. In 1982, Immerman and Vardi showed that over ordered structures, a fixed point extension of first-order logic captures the complexity class PTIME of polynomial time computable propertiE~s. Shortly thereafter, logical characterizations of other important complexity classes were obtained. This line of work is often referred to as descriptive complexity. A different line of finite model theory research is associated with the de­ velopment of relational databases. By the late 1970s, the relational database model had replaced others, and all the basic query languages for it were es­ sentially first-order predicate calculus or its minor extensions.

This book introduces the reader to the notions, the techniques, and the theory of grammatical picture generation, a research field focusing on formal systems that describe sets of pictures by means of syntactic rules.The book presents important types of picture generators, using a tree-based approach to stress their common algorithmic basis, the treatment influenced by the theory of computation, and the theory of formal languages in particular. It guides the reader through the basics of the tree-based approach on to dedicated chapters on line-drawing languages, collage grammars, iterated function systems, grid picture languages, languages of fractals, and languages of coloured collages, while presenting results about (un)decidable, NP-complete, or efficiently solvable problems, normal forms, hierarchies of language classes, and related phenomena.In support, the book contains detailed exercises throughout. The book is of interest to researchers and graduate studentsin computer science and mathematics who are engaged with the theory and practice of picture-generating systems.

Personal motivation. The dream of creating artificial devices that reach or outperform human inteUigence is an old one. It is also one of the dreams of my youth, which have never left me. What makes this challenge so interesting? A solution would have enormous implications on our society, and there are reasons to believe that the AI problem can be solved in my expected lifetime. So, it's worth sticking to it for a lifetime, even if it takes 30 years or so to reap the benefits. The AI problem. The science of artificial intelligence (AI) may be defined as the construction of intelligent systems and their analysis. A natural definition of a system is anything that has an input and an output stream. Intelligence is more complicated. It can have many faces like creativity, solving prob­ lems, pattern recognition, classification, learning, induction, deduction, build­ ing analogies, optimization, surviving in an environment, language processing, and knowledge. A formal definition incorporating every aspect of intelligence, however, seems difficult. Most, if not all known facets of intelligence can be formulated as goal driven or, more precisely, as maximizing some utility func­ tion. It is, therefore, sufficient to study goal-driven AI; e. g. the (biological) goal of animals and humans is to survive and spread. The goal of AI systems should be to be useful to humans.

Modern cryptology increasingly employs mathematically rigorous concepts and methods from complexity theory. Conversely, current research topics in complexity theory are often motivated by questions and problems from cryptology. This book takes account of this situation, and therefore its subject is what may be dubbed "cryptocomplexity'', a kind of symbiosis of these two areas.This book is written for undergraduate and graduate students of computer science, mathematics, and engineering, and can be used for courses on complexity theory and cryptology, preferably by stressing their interrelation. Moreover, it may serve as a valuable source for researchers, teachers, and practitioners working in these fields. Starting from scratch, it works its way to the frontiers of current research in these fields and provides a detailed overview of their history and their current research topics and challenges.

A man may imagine he understands something, but still not understand anything in the way that he ought to. (Paul of Tarsus, 1 Corinthians 8:2) Calling this a ‘practical theory’ may require some explanation. Theory and practice are often thought of as two di?erent worlds, governed bydi?erentideals,principles, andlaws.DavidLorgeParnas, forinstance,who hascontributedmuchtoourtheoreticalunderstandingofsoftwareengineering and also to sound use of theory in the practice of it, likes to point out that ‘theoretically’ is synonymous to ‘not really’. In applied mathematics the goal is to discover useful connections between these two worlds. My thesis is that in software engineering this two-world view is inadequate, and a more intimate interplay is required between theory and practice. That is, both theoretical and practical components should be integrated into a practical theory. It should beclearfrom theabovethattheintended readership of this book is not theoreticians. They would probably have di?culties in appreciating a book on theory where the presentation does not proceed in a logical sequence from basic de?nitions to theorems and mathematical proofs, followed by - plication examples. In fact, all this would not constitute what I understand by a practical theory in this context.

Randomness is a powerful phenomenon that can be harnessed to solve various problems in all areas of computer science. Randomized algorithms are often more efficient, simpler and, surprisingly, also more reliable than their deterministic counterparts. Computing tasks exist that require billions of years of computer work when solved using the fastest known deterministic algorithms, but they can be solved using randomized algorithms in a few minutes with negligible error probabilities.Introducing the fascinating world of randomness, this book systematically teaches the main algorithm design paradigms – foiling an adversary, abundance of witnesses, fingerprinting, amplification, and random sampling, etc. – while also providing a deep insight into the nature of success in randomization. Taking sufficient time to present motivations and to develop the reader's intuition, while being rigorous throughout, this text is a very effective and efficient introduction to this exciting field.

Parameterized complexity theory is a recent branch of computational complexity theory that provides a framework for a refined analysis of hard algorithmic problems. The central notion of the theory, fixed-parameter tractability, has led to the development of various new algorithmic techniques and a whole new theory of intractability.This book is a state-of-the-art introduction to both algorithmic techniques for fixed-parameter tractability and the structural theory of parameterized complexity classes, and it presents detailed proofs of recent advanced results that have not appeared in book form before. Several chapters are each devoted to intractability, algorithmic techniques for designing fixed-parameter tractable algorithms, and bounded fixed-parameter tractability and subexponential time complexity. The treatment is comprehensive, and the reader is supported with exercises, notes, a detailed index, and some background on complexity theory and logic.The book will be of interest to computer scientists, mathematicians and graduate students engaged with algorithms and problem complexity.

The first edition of the monograph Information and Randomness: An Algorithmic Perspective by Crist ian Calude was published in 1994. In my Foreword I said: "The research in algorithmic information theory is already some 30 years old. However, only the recent years have witnessed a really vigorous growth in this area. . . . The present book by Calude fits very well in our series. Much original research is presented. . . making the approach richer in consequences than the classical one. Remarkably, however, the text is so self-contained and coherent that the book may also serve as a textbook. All proofs are given in the book and, thus, it is not necessary to consult other sources for classroom instruction. " The vigorous growth in the study of algorithmic information theory has continued during the past few years, which is clearly visible in the present second edition. Many new results, examples, exercises and open prob­ lems have been added. The additions include two entirely new chapters: "Computably Enumerable Random Reals" and "Randomness and Incom­ pleteness". The really comprehensive new bibliography makes the book very valuable for a researcher. The new results about the characterization of computably enumerable random reals, as well as the fascinating Omega Numbers, should contribute much to the value of the book as a textbook. The author has been directly involved in these results that have appeared in the prestigious journals Nature, New Scientist and Pour la Science.