Philippa Gardner
Imperial College

Local Hoare Reasoning about DOM 



Abstract:

The W3C Document Object Model (DOM) specifies an XML update library. DOM is written in English, and is therefore not compositional and not complete.  We provide a first step towards a compositional specification of DOM. Unlike DOM, we are able to work with a minimal set of commands and obtain a complete reasoning for straight-line code.   Our work transfers O'Hearn, Reynolds and Yang's local Hoare reasoning for analysing heaps to XML, viewing XML as an in-place memory store as does DOM. In particular, we apply recent work by Calcagno, Gardner and Zarfaty on local Hoare reasoning about simple tree update to this real-world DOM application.  Our reasoning not only formally specifies a significant subset of DOM Core Level 1, but can also be used to verify, for example,   invariant properties of simple JavaScript programs.

This talk describes joint work with Gareth Smith, Mark Wheelhouse and Uri Zarfaty. 
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References

Local Hoare Reasoning about Data Update, Calcagno, Gardner, and Zarfaty, POPL 2005 and Plotkin's festschrift.
                          
Context Logic as Modal Logic: Completeness and Parametric Inexpressivity, Calcagno, Gardner, and Zarfaty, POPL 2007.

Local Hoare Reasoning about DOM, Gardner, Smith, Wheelhouse, and Zarfaty, PODS 2008.



   
Host:  John Reynolds
Appointments:  Margaret Weigand <weigand@cs.cmu.edu>

Wednesday, April 23, 2008
3:30 - 5:00 p.m.
Wean Hall 8220

Principles of Programming Seminars