Logic programme synthesis and transformation are topics of central importance to the software industry. The demand for software cannot be met by the current supply, in terms of volume, complexity or reliability. The most promising solution seems to be the increased automation of software production, as programmer productivity would improve, and correctness could be ensured by the application of mathematical methods. Because of their mathematical foundations, logic programmes lend themselves particularly well to machine-assisted development techniques, and therefore to automation. This volume contains the proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Logic Programme Synthesis and Transformation (LOPSTR '92), held at the University of Manchester, July 1992. The LOPSTR workshops are the only international meetings devoted to these two important areas. A variety of new techniques were described at the workshop, all of which promise to revolutionize the software industry once they become standard practice.
These include techniques for the transformation of an inefficient programme into an equivalent, efficient one, and the synthesis of a programme from a formal specification of its required behaviour. Among the topics covered in this volume are: optimal transformation of logic programmes; logic programme synthesis via proof planning; deductive synthesis of programmes for query answering; efficient compilation of lazy narrowing into PROLOG; synthesis of narrowing programmes; Logimix - a self-applicable partial evaluator for PROLOG; proof nets; and automatic termination analysis.