A Domain-Specific Language for Incremental and Modular Design of Large-Scale Verifiably-Safe Flow Networks (Preliminary Report)

TL;DR

This paper introduces a domain-specific language for constructing large, safe, and modular flow networks with formal guarantees, enabling scalable and verifiable network design.

Contribution

It presents a novel DSL with an associated type theory and formal semantics for inductively assembling and verifying large flow networks.

Findings

Defined a DSL for flow network composition

Developed a formal type system with proven soundness

Provided a rigorous semantics for feasible flows

Abstract

We define a domain-specific language (DSL) to inductively assemble flow networks from small networks or modules to produce arbitrarily large ones, with interchangeable functionally-equivalent parts. Our small networks or modules are "small" only as the building blocks in this inductive definition (there is no limit on their size). Associated with our DSL is a type theory, a system of formal annotations to express desirable properties of flow networks together with rules that enforce them as invariants across their interfaces, i.e, the rules guarantee the properties are preserved as we build larger networks from smaller ones. A prerequisite for a type theory is a formal semantics, i.e, a rigorous definition of the entities that qualify as feasible flows through the networks, possibly restricted to satisfy additional efficiency or safety requirements. This can be carried out in one of two ways, as a denotational semantics or as an operational (or reduction) semantics; we choose the first in preference to the second, partly to avoid exponential-growth rewriting in the operational approach. We set up a typing system and prove its soundness for our DSL.