WING 2014 - 5th International Workshop on Invariant Generation

The ability to automatically extract and synthesize auxiliary properties of programs has had a profound effect on program analysis, testing, and verification over the last several decades. A key impediment for program verification is the overhead associated with providing, debugging, and verifying auxiliary invariant annotations. Releasing the software developer from this burden is crucial for ensuring the practical relevance of program verification. In the context of testing, suitable invariants have the potential of enabling high-coverage test-case generation. Thus, invariant generation is a key ingredient in a broad spectrum of tools that help to improve program reliability and understanding. As the design and implementation of reliable software remains an important issue, any progress in this area will have a significant impact.
The increasing power of automated theorem proving and computer algebra has opened new perspectives for computer-aided program verification; in particular for the automatic generation of inductive assertions in order to reason about loops and recursion. Especially promising breakthroughs are invariant generation techniques by Groebner bases, quantifier elimination, and algorithmic combinatorics, which can be used in conjunction with model checking, theorem proving, static analysis, and abstract interpretation. The aim of this workshop is to bring together researchers from these diverse fields.