Testing and Verifying Invariant Based Programs in the SOCOS Environment

Abstract

SOCOS is a prototype tool for constructing programs and reasoning about their correctness. It supports the invariant based programming methodology by providing a diagrammatic environment for specification, implementation, verification and execution of procedural programs. Invariants and contracts (pre- and postconditions) are evaluated at runtime, following the Design by Contract paradigm. Furthermore, SOCOS generates correctness conditions for static verification based on the weakest precondition semantics of statements. To verify the program the user can attempt to automatically discharge these conditions using the Simplify theorem prover; conditions which were not automatically discharged can be proved interactively in the PVS theorem prover.