The 1^st International Workshop on Automated Specification Inference

Specifications provide programmers with the confidence their implementations are correct. Formal specifications can even automatically verify the code and specification are consistent, providing additional guarantees. However, most programmers do not write such specifications as it is either too hard, too time consuming, or requires expertise not widely available. Tools and techniques have been developed over time to (semi)automate the generation of such specifications, to varying success.

The International Workshop on Automated Specification Inference (WASPI) provides a venue for researchers and practitioners to come together and discuss the current state of the art of and challenges to specification inference techniques and tools. For example, how do we infer more complex and usable specifications? How do we increase the accuracy of the inference techniques? How do we encourage practitioners to use the inference tools and techniques more than they currently do? The goal of this workshop is to identify the most pressing open problems facing specification inference researchers and provide a solid direction toward solving those problems.

Important Dates

Topics

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• tools and techniques for automatically inferring:
  • behavioral interface specifications
  • hoare-style specifications
  • informal specifications (documentation)
  • information-flow specifications
  • model-based specifications
  • temporal specifications
• static specification inference techniques
• dynamic specification inference techniques
• automatic verification of inferred specifications
• mining software repository approaches to inference
• machine-learning approaches to inference
• inferring specifications from big data

Submission Information

WASPI 2018 invites novel contributions in the form of either 4-page short papers or 2-page position papers from both researchers and practitioners. Submissions can be research papers, practice papers, position papers, demo papers, or experience reports. All submissions should describe unpublished work and must have been neither previously accepted for publication nor concurrently submitted for review in another journal, book, conference, or workshop. Submissions are peer-reviewed and accepted papers will appear in the workshop proceedings.

Papers should be submitted electronically at: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=waspi2018

Submissions must follow the ESEC/FSE submission policies and be no more than 2 or 4 pages (including references).

Program Committee

• Mehdi Bagherzadeh, Oakland University
• Robert Dyer, Bowling Green State University
• Vasant Honavar, Penn. State University
• Suresh Jagannathan, Purdue University
• Miryung Kim, UCLA
• Yu David Liu, SUNY at Binghamton
• Santosh Nagarakatte, Rutgers
• Hoan Anh Nguyen, Iowa State University
• Tien N. Nguyen, University of Texas, Dallas
• Hridesh Rajan, Iowa State University

Organizers

• Robert Dyer, Bowling Green State University
• Vasant Honavar, Penn. State University
• Gary T. Leavens, University of Central Florida
• Hoan Anh Nguyen, Iowa State University
• Tien N. Nguyen, University of Texas, Dallas
• Hridesh Rajan, Iowa State University