Java Modeling Language

Abstract: Software development and maintenance are costly endeavors. The cost can be reduced if more software defects are detected earlier in the development cycle. This paper introduces the Extended Static Checker for Java (ESC/Java), an experimental compile-time program checker that finds common programming errors. The checker is powered by verification-condition generation and automatic theorem-proving techniques. It provides programmers with a simple annotation language with which programmer design decisions can be expressed formally. ESC/Java examines the annotated software and warns of inconsistencies between the design decisions recorded in the annotations and the actual code, and also warns of potential runtime errors in the code. This paper gives an overview of the checker architecture and annotation language and describes our experience applying the checker to tens of thousands of lines of Java programs.

Abstract: Several recent studies have introduced lightweight versions of Java: reduced languages in which complex features like threads and reflection are dropped to enable rigorous arguments about key properties such as type safety. We carry this process a step further, omitting almost all features of the full language (including interfaces and even assignment) to obtain a small calculus, Featherweight Java, for which rigorous proofs are not only possible but easy. Featherweight Java bears a similar relation to Java as the lambda-calculus does to languages such as ML and Haskell. It offers a similar computational "feel," providing classes, methods, fields, inheritance, and dynamic typecasts with a semantics closely following Java's. A proof of type safety for Featherweight Java thus illustrates many of the interesting features of a safety proof for the full language, while remaining pleasingly compact. The minimal syntax, typing rules, and operational semantics of Featherweight Java make it a handy tool for studying the consequences of extensions and variations. As an illustration of its utility in this regard, we extend Featherweight Java with generic classes in the style of GJ (Bracha, Odersky, Stoutamire, and Wadler) and give a detailed proof of type safety. The extended system formalizes for the first time some of the key features of GJ.

Abstract: The talk provides an overview and demonstration of an Extended Static Checker for the Java programming language, a program checker that finds errors statically but has a much more accurate semantic model than existing static checkers like type checkers and data flow analysers. For example, ESC/Java uses an automatic theorem-prover and reasons about the semantics of assignments and tests in the same way that a program verifier does. But the checker is fully automatic, and feels to the programmer more like a type checker than like a program verifier. A more detailed account of ESC/Java is contained in a recent PLDI paper [1]. The checker described in the talk and in the PLDI paper is a research prototype on which work ceased several years ago, but Joe Kiniry and David Cok have recently produced a more up-to-date checker, ESC/Java 2 [2].

Abstract: This paper describes a translator called Java PathFinder (Jpf), which translates from Java to Promela, the modeling language of the Spin model checker. Jpf translates a given Java program into a Promela model, which then can be model checked using Spin. The Java program may contain assertions, which are translated into similar assertions in the Promela model. The Spin model checker will then look for deadlocks and violations of any stated assertions. Jpf generates a Promela model with the same state space characteristics as the Java program. Hence, the Java program must have a finite and tractable state space. This work should be seen in a broader attempt to make formal methods applicable within NASA’s areas such as space, aviation, and robotics. The work is a continuation of an effort to formally analyze, using Spin, a multi-threaded operating system for the Deep-Space 1 space craft, and of previous work in applying existing model checkers and theorem provers to real applications.