Declarative approaches to control-flow modeling use logic-based languages to formalize a number of constraints that valid traces must satisfy. The most noticeable example is the Declare framework based on linear temporal logic. Despite the interest that Declare has been attracting, the current knowledge about its formal properties was rather limited. The goal of this paper is to fill this gap by: (i) analyzing the behavioral properties of Declare by comparing it with the modeling capabilities of traditional procedural design approaches, in particular, block-structured processes; (ii) analyzing Declare from the computational point of view. As for the former point, we identify both the block-structured processes constructs that can be simulated in Declare and the features of Declare that can be encoded in block-structured processes. As for the latter point, we show that checking whether a given set of Declare patterns admits a satisfying trace is an ${\mathrm {NP}}$ NP -hard problem. In particular, we identify some Declare specifications whose satisfying traces are all of exponential length and some useful Declare fragments where a satisfying trace whose length is polynomially bounded is guaranteed to exist. The paper also discusses the declare2sat prototype system and the results of a thorough experimental validation.

中文翻译：

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使用 DECLARE 进行控制流建模：行为属性、计算复杂性和工具

控制流建模的声明性方法使用基于逻辑的语言来形式化有效跟踪必须满足的许多约束。最引人注目的例子是宣布基于线性时序逻辑的框架。尽管有兴趣宣布一直很吸引人，但目前对其形式属性的了解相当有限。本文的目标是通过以下方式填补这一空白：（一世） 分析行为特征 宣布 通过将其与传统程序设计方法的建模能力进行比较，特别是块结构的过程； (二) 分析 宣布从计算的角度来看。对于前一点，我们确定了可以模拟的块结构过程构造宣布 和的特点 宣布可以在块结构的过程中进行编码。对于后一点，我们证明检查给定的集合是否宣布 模式承认一个令人满意的轨迹是一个 ${\mathrm {NP}}$ NP -难题。特别地，我们确定了一些宣布 满足轨迹都是指数长度和一些有用的规范 宣布其中保证存在长度为多项式有界的令人满意的迹线的片段。该论文还讨论了declare2sat 原型系统和彻底实验验证的结果。