Special issue on symbolic computation in software science

Adel Bouhoula, Bruno Buchberger, Laura Kovács, Temur Kutsia
2015 Journal of symbolic computation  
After an open call for papers, we received 18 submissions, six of which have been selected for publication after rigorous reviewing. The scope of the SCSS symposium and this special issue covers a wide range of topics related to theoretical and practical aspects of symbolic computation in software science. The accepted papers address problems in algorithm synthesis, termination analysis, program debugging, service composition, computational origami, formalization and computerization of
more » ... , and automated reasoning. The article by María Alpuente, Demis Ballis, Francisco Frechina, and Julia Sapiña considers the problem of trace exploration for Rewriting Logic computations. Trace exploration is an important technique for dynamic analysis of program behavior. As traces might grow very large, it is a challenge to develop adequate methods and tools. The approach proposed in the paper is based on a generic algorithm that can be tuned in different ways to reduce the size and the complexity of the traces being explored. It is intended for debugging and optimizing Rewriting Logic-based tools that manipulate computations in conditional rewrite theories modulo equations. The algorithm is implemented in the graphical tool called Anima that can be used for the analysis of Maude computations. Walid Belkhir, Yannick Chevalier, and Michael Rusinowitch present an automata-based approach to service composition. The problem under consideration is composition synthesis: Given a client and available services, compute a mediator agent that enables communication between the client and the services in such a way that each client request is forwarded to an appropriate service. The problem reduces to the existence of simulation between the target service (specified on the basis of the client request) and the asynchronous product of available services. Communication actions are parametrized by (possibly constrained) data from an infinite domain, which can be problematic for automata-based approaches to composition synthesis due to certain undecidability results for simulation. The authors deal with this problem by introducing an expressive service specification formalism in the form of an extension of automata, called parametrized automata, prove decidability of simulation preorder there, and use it to develop a mediator synthesis procedure. Automation of algorithm synthesis and theory exploration are the problems considered in the paper by Isabela Drȃmnesc and Tudor Jebelean. The focus is on proving-based automated synthesis of list algorithms: Given an input list, prove constructively the existence of its sorted version. Using different proof techniques, the authors synthesize five sorting algorithms as well as auxiliary functions used in them. During the process of synthesis, the theory of lists is explored by introducing and proving the properties that are used in the synthesis. The paper by Tetsuo Ida, Fadoua Ghourabi, and Kazuko Takahashi describes a formalization of polygonal knot origami. Computational origami represents algorithms and methods for modeling the ways http://dx.
doi:10.1016/j.jsc.2014.09.027 fatcat:ty5l4i7zgzedpkijxtxpisojfe