Soufflé (programming language)

Soufflé is an open source parallel logic programming language, influenced by Datalog. Soufflé includes both an interpreter and a compiler that targets parallel C++. Soufflé has been used to build static analyzers, disassemblers, and tools for binary reverse engineering. Soufflé is considered by academic researchers to be high-performance and "state of the art," and is often used in benchmarks in academic papers.^[2][3][4]

Soufflé

Paradigms	Declarative, Logic programming
Family	Datalog
Stable release	2.3[1]
Typing discipline	Static
License	UPL
Filename extensions	.dl
Website	souffle-lang.github.io
Influenced by
Datalog

Programming examples

Given a set of edges in a graph, the following program computes the set of (directed) paths between any two nodes. This is also known as the transitive closure of the edge relation.

.decl edge(x:number, y:number)
.input edge

.decl path(x:number, y:number)
.output path

path(x, y) :- edge(x, y).
path(x, y) :- path(x, z), edge(z, y).

Features

• An interpreter^[5] and a compiler^[6] that targets parallel C++ (C++ that uses OpenMP). Both the interpreter and compiler use semi-naïve evaluation.^[7]
• Stratified negation^[8]
• Aggregation^[9]
• Automatic index selection^[10]
• Specialized parallel data structures,^[11] including disjoint-sets,^[12] B-trees,^[13] and tries.^[14]
• Static typing^[15]
• Records and algebraic data types^[16]
• A foreign function interface^[17]

Related tools

In addition to a compiler and an interpreter, the Soufflé project also publishes:

• a profiler,
• a "provenance"-based debugger,^[18]
• an "auto-scheduler" (also called a "join optimizer") that chooses efficient query plans based on a profile, as in profile-guided optimization.^[19]

Applications

Soufflé has been used to build static analyzers, including:

• A pointer analysis for Java^[20]
• A control-flow analysis for Scheme^[21]
• Various analyses for smart contract languages^[22]

It has also been used to build tools for binary analysis, including reverse engineering,^[23] and disassemblers.^[24]