propertiesdepending

Propertiesdepending is a concept used to describe situations in which the truth or validity of certain properties of a system is contingent on the truth of other properties or conditions. It emphasizes inter-property dependencies rather than independent properties, and is used in formal methods, requirements engineering, and property-based testing to model how constraints propagate through a system.

In formal modeling, properties are represented as predicates, and a dependency graph defines edges from a property to another property it relies on. The evaluation of properties often proceeds by propagating truth values along the graph, with preconditions and invariants acting as prerequisites or gate conditions. The term can also appear in specifications that require conditional properties, where some properties are only meaningful when others hold.

Examples include a banking system in which the property “transaction completed” depends on “account balance sufficient” and “account not frozen”; a web application where “resource accessible” depends on “user authenticated” and “access control policy grants”; and an embedded control system where “emergency shutdown engaged” depends on “sensor health” and “watchdog timer status.”

Applications and challenges: property-based testing, model checking, and requirements tracing often benefit from explicitly modeling property dependencies. Challenges include circular dependencies, propagation of failures, and scale for large systems. Related concepts include preconditions, invariants, constraint propagation, and dependency graphs. See also precondition, invariant, dependency graph, constraint propagation, and property-based testing.