Can Formal Methods Cope with Software-Intensive Systems release_t3up5tddvfftphnpdk6r4nqgj4

by S Jähnichen, Martin Wirsing, Michel Lemoine, Stefan Jähnichen, Jeff Kramer

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Abstract

Preface During the last years practical Software Engineering techniques are used more and more to conduct systematic and rigorous development of large software systems. UML has become the standard notation for guiding and documenting Software Engineering projects. CASE tools of today offer not only the UML notation but also are able to generate code templates and to support round trip engineering between class diagrams and program code. However, used in practice they do not support well the early phases of software development; they still lack analysis and validation methods for requirements and design specifications which are easily connected to the implementation phase. Formal techniques have undergone a steep development during the last years. Based on formal foundations and deep theoretical results, methods and tools have been developed to support specifications and design of software systems. Model-based and algebraic specifications, abstract state machines, CSP and CCS, temporal logics, rewriting techniques, finite automata, model checking and many other formalisms and verification techniques have been applied to non-trivial examples and are used in practice e.g. for the development of safety critical systems. Several case studies have been proven to be useful for validating and evaluating formal software development techniques. Case studies tackle the development in the small such as the production cell, the steam boiler and the memory cell. What is missing is a comparison of the development in the large. How do known formal techniques scale up? How do they cope with aspects such as architecture, component ware, distribution, mobility reconfiguration? The aim of this workshop was to contribute to the field of Experimental System Engineering by proposing a case study for system development which allows one to compare different formal techniques in their abilities to specify, design, analyze and validate large software-intensive systems. The case study addresses the actual problem of controlling autonomous trains and systems and contains features such as local control in a distributed system, synchronous and asynchronous communication, heterogeneous components, and optimization problems. During the workshop the solutions for the case study was presented and discussed by the participants. Also related work on formal and semi-formal approaches to system development was presented. Our gratitude goes to the scientific directorate of Schloss Dagstuhl for giving us the possibility of organizing this workshop. However, the workshop would not have been possible without the help of the friendly and efficient staff of Schloss Dagstuhl. Our sincere thanks go to all of them. The organizers
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