Keynote address: the actual implementation will be derived from the formal specification -- KBSA, 1983

Abstract

The 1983 KBSA (Knowledge-Based Software Assistant) report led to the founding of the KBSE (Knowledge-Based Software Engineering conference series. The KBSE conference then changed into the ASE conference in 1997. And this year marks the 25th anniversary of the conference series. As an author of the KBSA report I was invited to talk here about the report and the beginnings of the conference. I will also discuss my own early research in program synthesis and logic programming, leading up to the KBSA report. We will visit some of the goals/milestones in the KBSA report. For example, the report calls for a formal requirements language, executable specifications, and a transformation language. The report also calls for a future development process in which "The transformation from requirements to specifications to implementations will be carried out with automated, knowledge-based assistance"; i.e., "the actual implementation will be derived from the formal specification", and "the [software] development and the proof of correctness will be co-derived". Then I will describe recent progress at Kestrel Institute, including a higher-order logic specification of a small operating system.