Undecidable problem

About: Undecidable problem is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 3135 publications have been published within this topic receiving 71238 citations.

An Algorithm for the Analysis of Termination of Large Trigger Sets in an OODBMS

Abstract: In this paper we describe an algorithm for the analysis of termination of a large set of triggers in an OODBMS. It is quite clear that, if the trigger mechanism is of sufficient complexity, the problem is undecidable. Yet, by the extensive use of object-oriented concepts, like derived classes, and lattice theory, we are able to give some sufficient conditions for termination which yield satisfying results. Another advantage of our approach is the uniform treatment of generic update operations on the one hand, and methods and abstract data types on the other.

Hyperplane separation technique for multidimensional mean-payoff games

Abstract: Two-player games on graphs are central in many problems in formal verification and program analysis such as synthesis and verification of open systems. In this work, we consider both finite-state game graphs, and recursive game graphs (or pushdown game graphs) that model the control flow of sequential programs with recursion. The objectives we study are multidimensional mean-payoff objectives, where the goal of player 1 is to ensure that the mean-payoff is non-negative in all dimensions. In pushdown games two types of strategies are relevant: (1) global strategies, that depend on the entire global history; and (2) modular strategies, that have only local memory and thus do not depend on the context of invocation. Our main contributions are as follows: (1) We show that finite-state multidimensional mean-payoff games can be solved in polynomial time if the number of dimensions and the maximal absolute value of the weights are fixed; whereas if the number of dimensions is arbitrary, then the problem is known to be coNP-complete. (2) We show that pushdown graphs with multidimensional mean-payoff objectives can be solved in polynomial time. For both (1) and (2) our algorithms are based on hyperplane separation technique. (3) For pushdown games under global strategies both one and multidimensional mean-payoff objectives problems are known to be undecidable, and we show that under modular strategies the multidimensional problem is also undecidable; under modular strategies the one-dimensional problem is NP-complete. We show that if the number of modules, the number of exits, and the maximal absolute value of the weights are fixed, then pushdown games under modular strategies with one-dimensional mean-payoff objectives can be solved in polynomial time, and if either the number of exits or the number of modules is unbounded, then the problem is NP-hard. (4) Finally we show that a fixed parameter tractable algorithm for finite-state multidimensional mean-payoff games or pushdown games under modular strategies with one-dimensional mean-payoff objectives would imply the fixed parameter tractability of parity games.

Weak Time Petri Nets Strike Back

Abstract: We consider the model of Time Petri Nets where time is associated with transitions. Two semantics for time elapsing can be considered: the strong one, for which all transitions are urgent, and the weak one, for which time can elapse arbitrarily. It is well known that many verification problems such as the marking reachability are undecidable with the strong semantics. In this paper, we focus on Time Petri Nets with weak semantics equipped with three different memory policies for the firing of transitions. We prove that the reachability problem is decidable for the most common memory policy (intermediate) and becomes undecidable otherwise. Moreover, we study the relative expressiveness of these memory policies and obtain partial results.

Chase Termination for Guarded Existential Rules

Abstract: The chase procedure is considered as one of the most fundamental algorithmic tools in database theory. It has been successfully applied to different database problems such as data exchange, and query answering and containment under constraints, to name a few. One of the central problems regarding the chase procedure is all-instance termination, that is, given a set of tuple-generating dependencies (TGDs) (a.k.a. existential rules), decide whether the chase under that set terminates, for every input database. It is well-known that this problem is undecidable, no matter which version of the chase we consider. The crucial question that comes up is whether existing restricted classes of TGDs, proposed in different contexts such as ontological query answering, make the above problem decidable. In this work, we focus our attention on the oblivious and the semi-oblivious versions of the chase procedure, and we give a positive answer for classes of TGDs that are based on the notion of guardedness. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that establishes positive results about the (semi-)oblivious chase termination problem. In particular, we first concentrate on the class of linear TGDs, and we syntactically characterize, via rich- and weak-acyclicity, its fragments that guarantee the termination of the oblivious and the semi-oblivious chase, respectively. Those syntactic characterizations, apart from being interesting in their own right, allow us to pinpoint the complexity of the problem, which is PSPACE-complete in general, and NL-complete if we focus on predicates of bounded arity, for both the oblivious and the semi-oblivious chase. We then proceed with the more general classes of guarded and weakly-guarded TGDs. Although we do not provide syntactic characterizations for its relevant fragments, as for linear TGDs, we show that the problem under consideration remains decidable. In fact, we show that it is 2EXPTIME-complete in general, and EXPTIME-complete if we focus on predicates of bounded arity, for both the oblivious and the semi-oblivious chase. Finally, we investigate the expressive power of the query languages obtained from our analysis, and we show that they are equally expressive with standard database query languages. Nevertheless, we have strong indications that they are more succinct.

The language theory of bounded context-switching

Abstract: Concurrent compositions of recursive programs with finite data are a natural abstraction model for concurrent programs. Since reachability is undecidable for this class, a restricted form of reachability has become popular in the formal verification literature, where the set of states reached within k context-switches, for a fixed small constant k, is explored. In this paper, we consider the language theory of these models: concurrent recursive programs with finite data domains that communicate using shared memory and work within k round-robin rounds of context-switches, and where further the stack operations are made visible (as in visibly pushdown automata). We show that the corresponding class of languages, for any fixed k, forms a robust subclass of context-sensitive languages, closed under all the Boolean operations. Our main technical contribution is to show that these automata are determinizable as well. This is the first class we are aware of that includes non-context-free languages, and yet has the above properties.