Ranan Fraer

Welcome to my page, a collection of things I'm quite sure are interesting only to me. In case you wonder how my thesis is going ... Although its completion might require an unpredictable amount of time, the results up to date have been astonishing, to say the least !

  • Address:
    INRIA Sophia Antipolis, Croap project
    2004 Route des Lucioles, BP 93
    06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex, France
  • Phone: (33) 93 65 79 09 Fax: (33) 93 65 77 65
  • e-mail: rfraer@sophia.inria.fr

  • Education:

  • Master Degree in Computer Science, Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon, June 1994.
  • Now in Doctoral Thesis in Computer Science in the Croap project at INRIA, Sophia Antipolis,
    since October 1994.
    My PhD topic is "Interactive Environments for Program Verification" and I'm supervised by Yves Bertot.
  • If you're interested in employing me, or just need a good laugh, you can read my CV (english or french version).

    Research interests:

    The typical program verification sytem is a batch tool that accepts as input a program annotated with Floyd-Hoare assertions, performs syntactic and semantic analysis on it, and generates a list of verification conditions that is subsequently submitted to a theorem prover. However, when a verification condition cannot be proved, this may be due to an error in the program or an inconsistency in the annotations. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to relate a failing proof attempt to a particular piece of code or assertion.

    My research deals with using debugging-like features in order to reestablish the link between verification conditions and the source program. This way, techniques like origin tracking and program slicing find new applications in the context of program verification. More generally, I'm interested in the interaction between various static analysis techniques based on dependence graphs and program verification. The overall goal would be to use Floyd-Hoare invariants not only in verification but also in debugging and maintenance of programs.

    Personally, I'm an enthusiastic supporter of Jean-Raymond Abrial's B method. There's a growing interest in B, as it has been already successfully applied on several large-scale industrial projects in France and UK. Not surprisingly, B tools are already marketed by two competing software houses. So, if you're in need of a formal method, do yourself a favour and take a look at B ! Anyway, here are some of my favourite Formal Methods links:
  • The World Wide Web Virtual Library: Formal Methods
  • NASA Langley Formal Methods Program
  • Automated Reasoning Systems Database
  • Computational Logic, Inc.
  • Odyssey Research Associates, Canada

  • Oh, I forgot. Work. Yes, I have some papers online:

  • Yves Bertot and Ranan Fraer Reasoning with Executable Specifications
    appeared at TAPSOFT'95, Aarhus (Denmark), May 1995, LNCS 915.
    Also appears as Inria Research Report no 2780.
  • Ranan Fraer Tracing the Origins of Verification Conditions
    appeared at AMAST'96, Munich (Germany), July 1996, LNCS 1101.
    Also appears as Inria Research Report no 2840.
  • Ranan Fraer Formal development in B of a Minimum Spanning Tree Algorithm
    appeared in the Proceedings of the First B Conference , Nantes(France), November 1996.

  • Rocka Rolla !

    Here are some links to my favourite bands:
  • Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath
  • Uriah Heep, Thin Lizzy, Alice Cooper, Scorpions
  • Rainbow, Whitesnake, Ozzy Osbourne, Dio
  • Judas Priest, Kiss, AC/DC, Iron Maiden, Accept
  • Motley Crue, Twisted Sister, WASP, Manowar
  • Queensryche, Savatage, Helloween, Gamma Ray