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Synthesizing Certified Code

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FME 2002:Formal Methods—Getting IT Right (FME 2002)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 2391))

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Abstract

Code certification is a lightweight approach for formally demonstrating software quality. Its basic idea is to require code producers to provide formal proofs that their code satisfies certain quality properties. These proofs serve as certificates that can be checked independently. Since code certification uses the same underlying technology as program verification, it requires detailed annotations (e.g., loop invariants) to make the proofs possible. However, manually adding annotations to the code is time-consuming and error-prone.

We address this problem by combining code certification with automatic program synthesis. Given a high-level specification, our approach simultaneously generates code and all annotations required to certify the generated code. We describe a certification extension of AutoBayes, a synthesis tool for automatically generating data analysis programs. Based on built-in domain knowledge, proof annotations are added and used to generate proof obligations that are discharged by the automated theorem prover E-SETHEO. We demonstrate our approach by certifying operator- and memory-safety on a data-classification program. For this program, our approach was faster and more precise than PolySpace, a commercial static analysis tool.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Univ. of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, 55455

    Michael Whalen

  2. RIACS / NASA Ames, Moffett Field, CA, 94035

    Johann Schumann & Bernd Fischer

Authors
  1. Michael Whalen
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  2. Johann Schumann
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  3. Bernd Fischer
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information Technology, Uppsala University, P.O. Box 337, 751 05, Uppsala, Sweden

    Lars-Henrik Eriksson

  2. Software Verification Research Centre, The University of Queensland, Queensland, 4072, Australia

    Peter Alexander Lindsay

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Whalen, M., Schumann, J., Fischer, B. (2002). Synthesizing Certified Code. In: Eriksson, LH., Lindsay, P.A. (eds) FME 2002:Formal Methods—Getting IT Right. FME 2002. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2391. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45614-7_25

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45614-7_25

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-45614-8

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