[SIST Seminar] Program Synthesis for Evolving Database Applications

Database  applications need to undergo schema refactorings during their life  cycle. Such refactorings require migrating the underlying data to a new  database and re-implementing large chunks of the code that query and  update the database. These code and data migration tasks are typically  non-trivial and error-prone to developers. This talk presents program  synthesis techniques to help developers correctly and easily evolve  database applications. Specifically, it first presents a novel technique  that can automatically synthesize an equivalent version of the database  program operating over the new schema. Then it describes a synthesis  technique that helps developers migrate data between schemas using input-output  examples. The experimental results demonstrate that these techniques  are effective for code and data migration during schema refactoring, and  they are more efficient than several baselines and state-of-the-art  approaches.

Yuepeng  Wang is an Assistant Professor in the School of Computing Science at  Simon Fraser University. He was a postdoctoral researcher at the  University of Pennsylvania and received his Ph.D. in Computer Science at  the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include programming languages, formal methods, software engineering, and  databases. His work has appeared in top-tier programming language and  database conferences, such as POPL, PLDI, OOPSLA, and VLDB. He has  received a distinguished paper award from OOPSLA.