In the last decade there has been a revolutionary improvement in the efficiency and expressive power of constraint solvers (e.g., Boolean SAT, SMT and CSP solvers), with a consequent impact on all manner of software engineering applications and research programs. A prime example of this impact is the rapid development and adoption of solver-based symbolic-execution techniques in myriad applications such as test generation, equivalence checking, security, automated exploit construction and fault localization. Black-box use of Boolean SAT solvers for proof-of-concept has been followed by the use of Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT) solvers integrating rich theories to treat these applications more thoroughly. An increasing amount of work is focussing on how best to use, tune, or extend solvers to meet the needs of particular applications. A similar theme of deeper integration of solver and application can be seen with ongoing research on Constraint Programming (CP) techniques and their use in software engineering.
The workshop will focus on a broad range of topics where solvers have already made an impact, e.g., symbolic-execution based testing, as well as newer ones where their use is still nascent, e.g., synthesis and software product lines. The topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Constraint-based analysis of programs and models
- Constraint-based test input generation
- Constraint-based exploration of programs and models
- SMT solvers for testing, verification, analysis, and synthesis
- SMT solvers and their applications in computer security
- Programmable SMT solvers
- Combinations of constraint solvers
- Constraint programming and software engineering
- Solvers and software product lines
- Solvers and fault localization
Following a first meeting held with the CP conference in 2006, and subsequent editions held at ICST in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013, the aim of the CSTVA workshop is to bring together researchers in SAT/SMT, CP and software engineering applications in order to raise the awareness of constraint solving in the broader software engineering research community and encourage development of new applications and extensible solvers.
An extended financial assistance program is available to students who attend ICSE 2014 in Hyderabad, India this year. ACM SIGSOFT has teamed up with the US National Science Foundation (NSF) to offer financial travel grants to undergraduate and graduate students. NSF funding will be available to undergraduate/graduate computer science students who are US Citizens and Permanent Residents. CAPS funding is available to all students. Priority will be given to students who are authors and present a paper at the main conference or any of the workshops and co-located events. The funds can be used to pay partially or in full (depending on qualifying conditions) for travel expenses, hotel expenses, and conference registration. To apply please visit the SIGSOFT CAPS website.