CAREER: Language Features for Robust Software

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Developing reliable software systems is a key challenge for oursociety. Despite many years of effort, software systems still sufferfrom catastrophic failures. All too often, software failures arecaused by the propagation of errors through critical components of thesystem. Unfortunately, current software development tools andpractices actually encourage the introduction of unnecessarydependencies that serve to propagate errors between conceptuallyunrelated components.The goal of this research is to explore a new approach for creatingsoftware systems that are robust against failures. The approachexposes the high-level structure of a software system to the compilerand run-time environment to enable the automatic application of techniques thatappropriately manage error propagation to make software systems moreresilient. The foundation of this approach is a specificationlanguage that allows the developer to identify tasks and describe whentasks should be invoked and how each task changes the conceptualstates of objects. A set of techniques use this information tomonitor and analyze task execution to eliminate unnecessarydependencies. The broader impact of this research is the potential tomitigate the effects of software faults.