Experience Report on Automated Procedure Construction for Deductive Synthesis

Deductive program synthesis systems based on automated theorem proving o er the promise of \correct by construction" software. However, the diÆculty encountered in constructing usable deductive synthesis systems has pr evente d their widespr ead use. A mphion is a realworld, domain-independent programsynthesis system. It is specialized to speci c applications through the creation of an operational domain theory and a specialize d deductive engine. This pap erdescrib esan exp eriment aimed at making the construction of usable A mphion applic ations easier. The software system Theory Operationalization for Pr ogr am Synthesis (TOPS) has a library of decision procedur eswith a theory template for each procedur e. TOPS identi es axioms in the domain theory that are an instance of a library of procedur eand uses partial deduction to augment the procedur e with the c apability to construct ground terms for deductive synthesis. Synthesized procedures are interfaced to a resolution theorem prover. Axioms in the original domain theory that are implied by the synthesized procedur es ar e removed. During deductive synthesis, each procedure is invoke d to test conjunctions of literals in the language of the theory of that procedur e. When possible, the procedur egener atesground terms and binds them to variables in a problem speci c ation. These terms are program fragments. Experiments show that the procedur es synthesized by TOPS can r educe theorem proving search at least as much as hand tuning of the deductive