Database applications typically undergo several schema changes during their life cycle due to performance and maintainability reasons. Such changes to the database schema not only require migrating the underlying the data to a new schema but also re-implementing large chunks of the application code that query and update the database. In this talk, we describe our recent work on programming languages support for evolving database applications. Specifically, we first describe our work on verifying equivalence between database applications that operate over different schema, such as those that arise before and after schema refactoring. Next, we describe how to use this verification procedure to solve the corresponding synthesis problem: That is, given a database application and a new schema, how can we automatically generate an equivalent program over this new schema?

Isil Dillig is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin where she leads the UToPiA research group. Her main research area is programming languages, with a specific emphasis on static analysis, verification, and program synthesis. The techniques developed by her group aim to make software systems more reliable, secure, and easier to build in a robust way. Dr. Dillig is a Sloan Fellow and a recipient of the NSF CAREER award. She obtained all her degrees (BS, MS, and PhD) from Stanford University.