Combining domain-specific and general-purpose languages to improve program analysis

编程是软件开发中的一项关键活动，它要求程序员费力地将对问题域的高级理解编码成代码-一组精确的指令，适合计算机执行。领域特定语言（DSL）通过减轻软件的高级设计和实现中所需的低级细节之间的概念不匹配，帮助弥合问题域和代码之间的差距。然而，由于DSL非常具体，它们通常不足以实现完整的软件系统。在许多情况下，它们必须与通用语言相结合。最近，程序分析工具越来越流行。例如，Microsoft要求经过认证的Windows设备驱动程序通过自动程序分析。然而，用DSL和通用语言的组合编写的程序比单语言程序更难分析。拟议的研究将开发以下技术：1）开发与通用语言干净集成的特定领域语言; 2）推断作为代码基础的特定领域抽象，从而提高代码的可维护性和潜在性能; 3）分析和自动改进以特定领域语言和通用语言组合编写的程序。这项研究的影响与软件在当今社会中日益普及紧密相关。特别是，作为这项研究的结果产生的编程工具将有助于加拿大工业更快地开发更好的软件。

Programming, a key activity in software development, requires a programmer to laboriously encode a high-level understanding of a problem domain into code---a set of precise instructions, suitable for a computer to execute. Domain-specific languages (DSLs) help bridge the gap between the problem domain and the code by mitigating the conceptual mismatch between the software's high-level design and the low-level details required in its implementation. However, because DSLs are very specific, they do not generally suffice for implementing complete software systems. In many cases, they must be combined with a general-purpose language.Recently, program analysis tools have been gaining popularity. For instance, Microsoft requires that certified Windows device drivers pass an automatic program analysis. However, programs written in a combination of a DSL and a general-purpose language are harder to analyze than single-language programs. The proposed research will develop techniques for: 1) developing domain-specific languages that cleanly integrate with general-purpose languages; 2) inferring the domain-specific abstractions that underlie code, thus improving the code's maintainability and potentially its performance; and 3) analyzing and automatically improving programs written in a combination of domain-specific languages and general purpose languages. The impact of this research is tightly linked to software's increasing ubiquity in today's society. In particular, the programming tools produced as a result of this research will help Canadian industry develop better software more quickly.