ADVANCE D3.3 Improvement of automated proof
Overview
In a regular Event-B modelling activity, more than 60% of the time is spent on proofs. Therefore, increasing the rate of automated proofs is a productivity booster which decreases the overall cost of formal modelling. Consequently, enhancing the automated prover has been a continuous task since the inception of the Rodin platform.
This task can be achieved by refactoring the core platform, by adding new features to it, such as new integrated reasoners and tactics, but also by connecting some external reasoning ability such as external provers (e.g., SMT solvers).
During the second period of the ADVANCE project, all these three kinds of activities have been performed.
Motivations / Decisions
Integrated provers
The proportion of automatically discharged proof obligations heavily depends on Auto-Tactic configuration. Sometimes, the automatic prover fails because the tactics are applied in an unappropriate order. Since Rodin 3.0, plug-ins can contribute their own default profiles (through extension points, for convenience) to make it easier to provide users with enhanced automatic proving capabilities.
SMT Solvers
SMT plug-in version 1.0.0 has been released. This version fixes stability issues of the previous releases.
TODO
Available Documentation
A page[1] concerning tactic profiles is available in the user manual.
A page[2] is dedicated to the SMT Solver integration plug-in on the Event-B wiki.
Planning
Enhancement to automated proof will continue during the ADVANCE project. Notably, the remaining missing rewriting[3] and inference rules[4], that have already been documented, will be implemented together with new rules.
Maintenance of the SMT solver integration plug-in will be ensured within the time frame of ADVANCE. In particular, the translation to SMT-LIB will be completed by adding some support for mathematical extensions.
Finally, connecting other provers (such as Super Zenon and iProver) to the platform will be investigated.
