Séminaire professeur invité APR
Sound static analysis of modern software architectures
Tuesday, March 18, 2025Pietro Ferrara (Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Italy)
Modern software architectures comprise several programming languages, frameworks, technologies, and structures. While most existing software comprises several distinct distributed components, how the software is organized and how the different components communicate depends on the specific architectural style adopted. In addition, software architectures evolved quickly: multi-tier (typically front-end, back-end, and database), service-oriented, microservices, and serverless architectures are a few examples of widely adopted architectures. However, some common patterns can be identified. In particular, distinct nodes of the distributed system usually communicate either synchronously through REST APIs or asynchronously through pub/sub messaging. This allows us to abstract together implementations using different technological solutions. Nevertheless, applying sound static analysis to such a diversified technological ecosystem remains challenging. Defining the semantics, proving the soundness of abstractions, and implementing the analyses require ad hoc approaches for each pattern. In this talk, we will present the current trends we experienced in modern software architectures and how we approached the sound static analysis of such software.