License: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)
When quoting this document, please refer to the following
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2023.22
URN: urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-182154
URL: http://dagstuhl.sunsite.rwth-aachen.de/volltexte/2023/18215/
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Nieto, Abel ; Daby-Seesaram, Arnaud ; Gondelman, Léon ; Timany, Amin ; Birkedal, Lars

Modular Verification of State-Based CRDTs in Separation Logic

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LIPIcs-ECOOP-2023-22.pdf (1 MB)

Abstract

Conflict-free Replicated Datatypes (CRDTs) are a class of distributed data structures that are highly-available and weakly consistent. The CRDT taxonomy is further divided into two subclasses: state-based and operation-based (op-based). Recent prior work showed how to use separation logic to verify convergence and functional correctness of op-based CRDTs while (a) verifying implementations (as opposed to high-level protocols), (b) giving high level specifications that abstract from low-level implementation details, and (c) providing specifications that are modular (i.e. allow client code to use the CRDT like an abstract data type). We extend this separation logic approach to verification of CRDTs to handle state-based CRDTs, while respecting the desiderata (a)-(c). The key idea is to track the state of a CRDT as a function of the set of operations that produced that state. Using the observation that state-based CRDTs are automatically causally-consistent, we obtain CRDT specifications that are agnostic to whether a CRDT is state- or op-based. When taken together with prior work, our technique thus provides a unified approach to specification and verification of op- and state-based CRDTs. We have tested our approach by verifying StateLib, a library for building state-based CRDTs. Using StateLib, we have further verified convergence and functional correctness of multiple example CRDTs from the literature. Our proofs are written in the Aneris distributed separation logic and are mechanized in Coq.

BibTeX - Entry

@InProceedings{nieto_et_al:LIPIcs.ECOOP.2023.22,
  author =	{Nieto, Abel and Daby-Seesaram, Arnaud and Gondelman, L\'{e}on and Timany, Amin and Birkedal, Lars},
  title =	{{Modular Verification of State-Based CRDTs in Separation Logic}},
  booktitle =	{37th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2023)},
  pages =	{22:1--22:27},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-281-5},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2023},
  volume =	{263},
  editor =	{Ali, Karim and Salvaneschi, Guido},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/volltexte/2023/18215},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-182154},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2023.22},
  annote =	{Keywords: separation logic, distributed systems, CRDT, replicated data type, formal verification}
}

Keywords: separation logic, distributed systems, CRDT, replicated data type, formal verification
Collection: 37th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2023)
Issue Date: 2023
Date of publication: 11.07.2023
Supplementary Material: Software (ECOOP 2023 Artifact Evaluation approved artifact): https://doi.org/10.4230/DARTS.9.2.15

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