Using Petri net invariants in state space construction
The linear algebraic invariant calculus is a powerful technique for the verification of Petri nets. Traditionally it is used for structural verification, i.e. for avoiding the explicit construction of a state space. In this paper, we study the use of Petri net invariants for reducing the memory resources required during state space construction. While place invariants help to reduce the amount of memory needed for each single state (without reducing the number of states as such), transition invariants can be used to reduce the number of states to be stored. Interestingly, our approach does not require computing invariants in full, let alone storing them permanently. All information we need can be deduced from an upper triangular form of the Petri net's incidence matrix. Experiments prove that the place invariant technique leads to improvements in both memory and run time costs while transition invariants lead to a space/time tradeoff that can be controlled heuristically.

title: Verification of Siphons and Traps for Algebraic Petri Nets
abstract: Siphons and traps are structures which allow for some implications on the net's behaviour and can be used in manual correctness proofs for concurrent systems. We introduce symbolic representations of siphons and traps which work quite well even in infinite cases and are still intuitively readable. The verification of symbolic siphons and traps is traced back to unification and structural induction on the terms. This approach is motivated by some additional considerations. For unification and other proposed structural reasoning mechanisms tool support is given by completeness proof tools studied in the theorem-proving community.

title: Distributed verification with LoLA
abstract: We report work in progress on a distributed version of explicit state space generation in the Petri net verification tool LoLA. We propose a data structure where all available memory of all involved workstations can be fully exploited, and load balancing actions are possible at any time while the verification is running. It is even possible to extend the set of involved workstations while a verification is running.

title: How to calculate symmetries of Petri nets
abstract: Symmetric net structure yields symmetric net behaviour. Thus, knowing the symmetries of a net, redundant calculations can be skipped. We present a framework for the calculation of symmetries for several net classes including place/transition nets, timed nets, stochastic nets, self–modifying nets, nets with inhibitor arcs, and many others. Our approach allows the specification of different symmetry groups. Additionally it provides facilities either to calculate symmetries on demand while running the actual analysis algorithm, or to calculate them in advance. For the latter case we define and calculate a ground set of symmetries. Such a set has polynomial size and is sufficient for an efficient implementation of the for all symmetries loop and the partition of net elements into equivalence classes. These two constructions are the usual way to integrate symmetries into an analysis algorithm.

title: LoLA: a low level analyser
abstract: With LoLA, we put recently developed state space oriented algorithms to other tool developers disposal. Providing a simple interface was a major design goal such that it is as easy as possible to integrate LoLA into tools of different application domains. LoLA supports place/transition nets. Implemented verification techniques cover standard properties (liveness, reversibility, boundedness, reachability, dead transitions, deadlocks, home states) as well as satisfiability of state predicates and CTL model checking. For satisfiability, both exhaustive search and heuristically goal oriented system execution are supported. For state space reduction, LoLA features symmetries, stubborn sets, and coverability graphs.

title: Model-Checking with Coverability Graphs
abstract: We show that several formulas of a temporal logic can be verified using the coverability graph of the underlying system. Of course, the procedure is not capable of verifying all formulae, since already the reachability problem for (unbounded) Petri nets is computationally hard. Thus, the procedure returns true, false, or unknown for a query. The formulae that can be verified cover most of the well known standard properties which have been listed in the context of coverability graph analysis so far.

title: Autonomes Index Tuning - DBMS-integrierte Verwaltung von Soft Indexen
abstract: Das Self Management in DBMS, und das Self Tuning als wichtiger Teil davon, gewinnt auf Grund der wachsenden Komplexitat von Systemen und Anwendungen und den daraus resultierenden steigenden Betriebskosten zunehmend an Beachtung. Der Stand der Technik bezuglich des Index Tunings sind AdministrationsTools, die aus einem gegebenen Workload eine empfohlene Indexkonfiguration ableiten. Diese muss jedoch bei Anderungen des Systems, dessen Umgebung oder der Zugriffsmuster wiederholt angepasst werden. Wir stellen in diesem Beitrag einen dynamischen Ansatz zum Index Tuning vor, der zur Laufzeit das Systemverhalten und die -nutzung uberwacht, Entscheidungen bezuglich moglicher Verbesserungen der aktuellen Indexkonfiguration trifft und diese integriert mit der Anfrageverarbeitung umsetzt. Fur den zuletzt genannten Aspekt fuhren wir mit IndexBuildScan und SwitchPlan neue Operatoren zur Erzeugung von Indexen wahrend der Bearbeitung einer Anfrage sowie deren sofortiger Nutzung ein. Die Beschreibung der Implementierung der vorgestellten Konzepte als Erweiterung des PostgreSQL-Systems, sowie eine Evaluierung an Hand eines von TPC-H abgeleiteten Benchmarks beschliesen den Beitrag.

title: Tailor-Made Native XML Storage Structures
abstract: Automatically choosing suitable native storage structures for XML doc- uments arriving at the XML DBMS is a challenging task for its storage manager. While some of the critical parameters require pre-specification, others can be deter- mined by pre-analysis or sampling of the incoming document or by just making ex- perience-driven "educated guesses". In this paper, we discuss approaches to achieve an adaptive behavior of the storage manager to provide tailor-made native XML stor- age structures to the extent possible. 1I ntroduction The XML data model allows for a great deal of modeling flexibility with which order, op- tional and multi-valued concepts, as well as deeply nested relationships can be captured. Therefore, the resulting tree structures of natively represented XML documents exhibit large variations in breadth and depth. Furthermore, XML documents may be data-centric having relatively little 'content' stored as short text values or they may be document-cen- tric where a single content node may contain huge portions of text, e.g., an entire book in a digital library. For these reasons, it is highly advisable to equip the storage manager with the ability to select reasonable or even optimal storage structures for documents. Furthermore, two cas- es have to be considered: a document sent by a client arrives at a time—the so-called block mode, i.e., the document can be pre-parsed and analyzed before a storage structure is cho- sen—or it arrives at the DBMS interface in stream mode where fragments present, due to their size, have to be allocated in a suitable storage structure on disk before the entire "streamed" document is available for the DBMS. In the latter case, the storage manager must decide—based on imprecise structural information—on the storage structure to be chosen and, at best, can make some educated guesses based on context or sampling infor- mation.

title: Benchmarking Performance-Critical Components in a Native XML Database System
abstract: The rapidly increasing number of XML-related applications indicates a growing need for efficient, dynamic, and native XML support in database management systems (XDBMS). So far, both industry and academia primarily focus on benchmarking of high-level performance figures for a variety of applications, queries, or documents --- frequently executed in artificial workload scenarios --- and, therefore, may analyze and compare only specific or incidental behavior of the underlying systems. To cover the full XDBMS support, it is mandatory to benchmark performance-critical components bottom-up, thereby removing bottlenecks and optimizing component behavior. In this way, wrong conclusions are avoided when new techniques such as tailored XML operators, index types, or storage mappings with unfamiliar performance characteristics are used. As an experience report, we present what we have learned from benchmarking a native XDBMS and recommend certain setups to do it in a systematic and meaningful way.

title: The promise of solid state disks: increasing efficiency and reducing cost of DBMS processing
abstract: Most database systems (DBMSs) today are operating on servers equipped with magnetic disks. In our contribution, we want to motivate the use of two emerging and striking technologies, namely native XML DBMSs (XDBMSs for short) and solid state disks. In this context, the traditional read/write model optimized by a sophisticated cache hierarchy and the IO cost model for databases needs adjustment. Such new devices together with optimized storage mapping of XML documents provide a number of challenging characteristics. We discuss howtheir optimization potential ca be exploited to enhance transactional DB performance under reduced energy consumption to match increasing application demands and, at the same time, to guarantee economic energy use in data centers.

title: Comparison of Complete and Elementless Native Storage of XML Documents
abstract: Because XML documents tend to be very large, are accessed by declarative and navigational languages, and often are processed in a collaborative way using read/write transactions, their fine-grained storage and management in XML DBMSs is a must for which, in turn, a flexible and space-economic tree representation is mandatory. In this paper, we explore a variety of options to natively store, encode, and compress XML documents thereby preserving the full DBMS processing flexibility on the documents required by the various language models and usage characteristics. Important issues of our empirical study are related to node labeling, document container layout, indexing, as well as structure and content compression. Encoding and compression of XML documents with their complete structure leads to a space consumption of ~40% to ~60% compared to their plain representation, whereas structure virtualization (elementless storage) saves in the average more than 10%, in addition.