Practical Aspects of Automated Deduction for Program Verification

Abstract

Software is vital for modern society. It is used in many safety- or security-critical applications, where a high degree of correctness is desirable. Over the last years, technologies for the formal specification and verification of software—using logic-based specification languages and automated deduction—have matured and can be expected to complement and partly replace traditional software engineering methods in the future. Program verification is an increasingly important application area for automated deduction. The field has outgrown the area of academic case studies, and industry is showing serious interest. This article describes the aspects of automated deduction that are important for program verification in practise, and it gives an overview of the reasoning mechanisms, the methodology, and the architecture of modern program verification systems.