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Synthesis from a Practical Perspective

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Leveraging Applications of Formal Methods, Verification and Validation: Foundational Techniques (ISoLA 2016)

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Abstract

Based on a very liberal understanding of synthesis as a generic term for techniques that generate programming artifacts from higher-level specifications, the paper discusses several corresponding facets from a practical perspective. The synthesis examples we consider comprise variations of code generation, model synthesis from temporal logic descriptions, and metamodel-based tool generation. Although very different, they can all be regarded as means to “factor out” predefined aspects of the envisioned product or the production environment so that developers/designers can simply focus on the remaining issues. This “factoring out” of what is pre-agreed or predefined is a primary goal of domain-specific languages design, and it is applicable to both modeling and programming languages. Leading synthesis techniques elegantly achieve this factoring by combining forms of substitution/partial evaluation to those steps that can be determined locally, as is typically the case for most parts of code generation, with (heuristic) search for those parts where more global patterns need to be matched, as is the case, e.g., for temporal- logic synthesis. The paper presents our experience with a variety of synthesis approaches and corresponding design and synthesis tools. It also discusses the synergetic potential of their combination, e.g., to control the computational complexity by reducing the underlying search space. This is, in our opinion, a viable path to achieve a fundamentally higher simplicity in IT system design.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For a more detailed introduction to the available model types please refer to [8] and DIME’s web site: http://dime.scce.info.

  2. 2.

    PROPHETS = Process Realization and Optimization Platform using Human-readable Expression of Temporal-logic Synthesis.

  3. 3.

    Of course, not only the Ecore metamodel is generated from MGL and MSL, but also a lot of Java source code for the actual editor and other supporting code. However, including all those aspects into Fig. 5 would considerably lower its comprehensibility.

  4. 4.

    The previously introduced aspects of visual appearance and validation are not discussed here, and follow very similar concepts.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported, in part, by Science Foundation Ireland grant 13/RC/2094 and co-funded under the European Regional Development Fund through the Southern & Eastern Regional Operational Programme to Lero - the Irish Software Research Centre (www.lero.ie).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chair for Programming Systems, TU Dortmund University, Dortmund, Germany

    Sven Jörges, Stefan Naujokat & Bernhard Steffen

  2. Lero - The Irish Software Research Centre, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland

    Anna-Lena Lamprecht & Tiziana Margaria

  3. Chair of Software Systems, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland

    Tiziana Margaria

Authors
  1. Sven Jörges
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  2. Anna-Lena Lamprecht
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  3. Tiziana Margaria
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  4. Stefan Naujokat
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  5. Bernhard Steffen
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Stefan Naujokat .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Lero, Limerick, Ireland

    Tiziana Margaria

  2. TU Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany

    Bernhard Steffen

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Jörges, S., Lamprecht, AL., Margaria, T., Naujokat, S., Steffen, B. (2016). Synthesis from a Practical Perspective. In: Margaria, T., Steffen, B. (eds) Leveraging Applications of Formal Methods, Verification and Validation: Foundational Techniques. ISoLA 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9952. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47166-2_20

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