An abstract representation of variational graphs

Erwig, Martin; Walkingshaw, Eric; Chen, Sheng

doi:10.1145/2528265.2528270

Cited by 9 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 32 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Variational SAT solving is the latest in a line of work that uses the choice calculus to investigate variation as a computational phenomena. The choice calculus has been successfully applied to diverse areas of computer science, such as databases [4,5], graphics [28], data structures [30,49,61,69], type systems [14,15,20,21], error messages [17][18][19][20], and now satisfiability solving. Our use of choices is similar to the concept of facets [6] and faceted execution [7,50,58], which have been successfully applied to information-flow security and policy-agnostic programming.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Variational satisfiability solving

Young

Walkingshaw

Thüm

2020

Proceedings of the 24th ACM Conference on Systems and Software Product Line: Volume a - Volume A

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Incremental satisfiability (SAT) solving is an extension of classic SAT solving that allows users to efficiently solve a set of related SAT problems by identifying and exploiting shared terms. However, using incremental solvers effectively is hard since performance is sensitive to a problem's structure and the order sub-terms are fed to the solver, and the burden to track results is placed on the end user. For analyses that generate sets of related SAT problems, such as those in software product lines, incremental SAT solvers are either not used at all, used but not explicitly stated so in the literature, or used but suffer from the aforementioned usability problems. This paper translates the ordering problem to an encoding problem and automates the use of incremental SAT solving. We introduce variational SAT solving, which differs from incremental SAT solving by accepting all related problems as a single variational input and returning all results as a single variational output. Our central idea is to make explicit the operations of incremental SAT solving, thereby encoding differences between related SAT problems as local points of variation. Our approach automates the interaction with the incremental solver and enables methods to automatically optimize sharing of the input. To evaluate our methods we construct a prototype variational SAT solver and perform an empirical analysis on two real-world datasets that applied incremental solvers to software evolution scenarios. We show, assuming a variational input, that the prototype solver scales better for these problems than naive incremental solving while also removing the need to track individual results. CCS CONCEPTS • Software and its engineering → Software product lines; • Hardware → Theorem proving and SAT solving.

show abstract

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Variational satisfiability solving

Young

Walkingshaw

Thüm

2020

Proceedings of the 24th ACM Conference on Systems and Software Product Line: Volume a - Volume A

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Altogether, approaches concerned with variability-aware graphs associate features either with edges [7] [11], nodes [6], or both [8] [9]. Erwig et al present a formal foundation for the representation of variational graphs [9], which is more general than our approach (based on snippets, ASTs and coloring).…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Erwig et al present a formal foundation for the representation of variational graphs [9], which is more general than our approach (based on snippets, ASTs and coloring). For instance, Erwig et al support variability of nodes and edges, while we support only variability of nodes to conform to the snippet model.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Separating features using colored snippet graphs

Behringer

Kirsch

Rothkugel

2014

Proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Feature-Oriented Software Development

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In feature-oriented software product lines, two complementary approaches to implement features exist: compositional and annotative ones. To combine the respective advantages, a unified representation of the two on the file-system level is desirable, yet unavailable. We pick up this demand and propose a novel concept for separating features using colored snippet graphs instead of directories and files. In particular, our proposed ideas are based on snippets, ASTs and coloring, and enable the implementation of product lines with both compositional and annotative views on real documents. As a basis for future tools, we provide a conceptual overview of our approach, discuss our ideas for leveraging snippets, and demonstrate applicability using an example scenario.

show abstract

“…In our travel planning example, we took as a given a route-planning service that returned a list of alternative itineraries. This service must cope with variation in several different kinds of data: The transportation network graph may be variational [23] if users can choose what modes of transportation they are willing to take, how far they are willing to walk, etc. The input may be variational if we allow for optional waypoints (nodes in the graph) or prioritize certain modes of travel (edges).…”

Section: Motivating Examplesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In a more foundational line of work, Erwig et al developed an abstract representation of variational sets and graphs, and a framework for describing variational graph algorithms [23]. The representation is based on tagging the components of the data structures with Boolean inclusion conditions.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Variational Data Structures

Walkingshaw

Kästner

Erwig

et al. 2014

Proceedings of the 2014 ACM International Symposium on New Ideas, New Paradigms, and Reflections on Programming &Amp; Software

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Variation is everywhere, and in the construction and analysis of customizable software it is paramount. In this context, there arises a need for variational data structures for efficiently representing and computing with related variants of an underlying data type. So far, variational data structures have been explored and developed ad hoc. This paper is a first attempt and a call to action for systematic and foundational research in this area. Research on variational data structures will benefit not only customizable software, but many other application domains that must cope with variability. In this paper, we show how support for variation can be understood as a general and orthogonal property of data types, data structures, and algorithms. We begin a systematic exploration of basic variational data structures, exploring the tradeoffs among different implementations. Finally, we retrospectively analyze the design decisions in our own previous work where we have independently encountered problems requiring variational data structures.

show abstract

An abstract representation of variational graphs

Cited by 9 publications

References 32 publications

Variational satisfiability solving

Variational satisfiability solving

Separating features using colored snippet graphs

Variational Data Structures

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About