Software programming gets a turbo boost

A team from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA) in Greece has managed to create a more effective way to help programmers develop faster and more accurate software.

In the last few years, computer science has been looking at declarative programming as a more robust way to build computer programmes than the traditional imperative programming. The EU-funded project 'Advanced program analysis using declarative languages' (PADECL) focused on developing effective programme analysis algorithms using Datalog, a truly declarative logic programming language used often as a query language for deductive databases.

The project team is working on gaining better precision and performance than previous work in the field. In more technical terms, this is being achieved through escape analysis and exception analysis under the Doop framework, part of the Java computer programming language.

In this way, PADECL has already implemented high-level security, reliability and performance-oriented analyses for Java programmes. It also developed initial infrastructure for Javascript programme analysis, backed by Microsoft research, enabling the import and representation of Javascript. In effect, the work achieved has improved the functionality of the Doop framework.

Overall research results are being published for two major industry events, namely the International Conference on Compiler Construction (CC 2013) and Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI 2013). The team has also produced four publications on the topic in collaboration with the University of Athens. Information about these achievements and the resulting programme analysis framework can be found on the project website.

Overall, PADECL expects to release a richer, more accurate modular programme analysis framework that will facilitate automatic programme understanding. This can lead to developing faster, more reliable software and increased programmer productivity, yielding important benefits for many sectors of the economy. Software tools such as compilers, integrated development environments (IDEs), browsers and bug detectors could particularly benefit from this project.

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