Thu 18 Jul 2019 10:30 - 10:50 at Mancy - Domain Specific Languages Chair(s): Sebastian Erdweg

The P4 programming language offers high-level, declarative abstractions that bring the flexibility of software to the domain of networking. Unfortunately, the main abstraction used to represent packet data in P4 - header types - lacks basic safety guarantees. Over the last few years, experience with an increasing number of P4 programs has shown the risks of the unsafe approach, which often leads to subtle software bugs.

This paper proposes SafeP4, a domain-specific language for programmable data planes in which all packet data is guaranteed to have a well-defined meaning and satisfy essential safety guarantees. We equip SafeP4 with a formal semantics and a static type system that statically guarantees header validity - a major source of safety bugs according to our analysis of real-world P4 programs. Statically ensuring header validity is challenging because the set of valid headers can be modified at runtime, making it a dynamic program property. Our type system achieves static safety by using a form of path-sensitive reasoning that tracks dynamic information from conditional statements, routing tables, and the control plane. Our empirical evaluation shows that SafeP4’s type system can effectively eliminate common failures in many real-world programs.

Thu 18 Jul

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10:30 - 12:10
Domain Specific LanguagesResearch Papers at Mancy
Chair(s): Sebastian Erdweg JGU Mainz
10:30
20m
Research paper
How to Avoid Making a Billion-Dollar Mistake: Type-Safe Data Plane Programming with SafeP4
Research Papers
Matthias Eichholz , Eric Campbell Cornell University, Nate Foster Cornell University, Guido Salvaneschi TU Darmstadt, Mira Mezini TU Darmstadt, Germany
DOI Media Attached
10:50
20m
Research paper
Fling—A Fluent API Generator
Research Papers
Yossi Gil Technion—Israel Institute of Technology, Ori Roth Technion
DOI
11:10
20m
Research paper
Semantic Patches for Java Program TransformationExperience Report
Research Papers
Hong Jin Kang School of Information Systems, Singapore Management University, Ferdian Thung , Julia Lawall Inria/LIP6, Gilles Muller LIP6-INRIA/UPMC, Lingxiao Jiang Singapore Management University, David Lo Singapore Management University
DOI Media Attached
11:30
20m
Research paper
Finally, a Polymorphic Linear Algebra LanguagePearl
Research Papers
Amir Shaikhha University of Oxford, Lionel Parreaux EPFL
DOI
11:50
20m
Research paper
NumLin: Linear Types for Linear Algebra
Research Papers
Dhruv Makwana Unaffiliated, Neel Krishnaswami Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge
DOI Pre-print Media Attached File Attached