The First World Congress on Formal Methods in the Development of Computing Systems

Abstract.

Formal methods are coming of age: mathematical techniques and tools are now regarded as an important part of the development process in a wide range of industrial and governmental organisations. A transfer of technology into the mainstream of systems development is slowly, but surely, taking place.

FM'99, the First World Congress on Formal Methods in the Development of Computing Systems, was a result and a measure of this new-found maturity. It brought together an impressive array of industrial and applications-oriented papers that show how formal methods have been used to tackle real problems. The proceedings are published as Volumes 1708 and 1709 in Springer-Verlag's Lecture Notes in Computer Science.

These proceedings are a record of the technical symposium of FM'99. Alongside the papers describing applications of formal methods, you will find technical reports, papers, and abstracts detailing new advances in formal techniques, from mathematical foundations to practical tools.

After the World Congress, we decided that many papers deserved a wider audience, and we created an opportunity for their authors to revise and extend their work. The proceedings contain over one hundred papers, and we decided to publish twelve of them simultaneously in special issues of three journals: Formal Aspects of Computing, Formal Methods in System Design, and IEEE Transactions in Software Engineering. The papers selected are among the best submitted to FM'99, and were subjected to a rigorous second review process involving leading international academic and industrial researchers.