Targeted Properties

Understand how targeted properties work and get started with writing targeted properties and how they work with simulated annealing.

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How targeted properties work

Understanding the mechanism under which targeted properties operate will help make the right choices about how to use them, and will also help with customized strategies to help PropEr maximize or minimize values.

Historically, researchers tried a few mechanisms when first developing targeted properties, but the most flexible one turned out to be simulated annealing.

Simulated annealing

Simulated annealing is a complex method to probabilistically find good approximations of the possible maximal value of a function.

Let’s say we’re looking for the best way to optimize data throughput for packet-based communication. We have to juggle factors such as packet size, path cost, latency, bandwidth, and so on. There are multiple things that can impact the end result, but we worry about one principal metric: how many bytes per second can make it through.

All the solutions and parameters can be represented something like this:

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