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Using Alloy in Introductory Courses of Formal Methods

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Structured Object-Oriented Formal Language and Method (SOFL+MSVL 2014)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 8979))

Abstract

Compact and easy-to-learn educational material of core ideas in formal methods is prepared for students in software engineering courses. Although mathematical logic is usually employed to explore the basic ideas precisely and concisely, some students with limited background are not able to follow the contents. We adapt Alloy to sugar wrap logic, which makes it possible for students to learn the core ideas by experimenting with the tool. The proposed material covers model-oriented specification notations and SAT-based automatic formal verification methods. These are important subfields of formal methods in view of both theory and practice for software engineering courses.

S. Nakajima—also affiliated with The Graduate University for Advanced Studies (SOKENDAI).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    We switch to the interactive proof when the automatic prover fails.

  2. 2.

    hereafter called SBMC to stand for software bounded-model checker.

  3. 3.

    Education Network for Practical Information Technologies, http://www.enpit.jp.

  4. 4.

    Ministry of Education, Cultural, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Institute of Informatics, Tokyo, Japan

    Shin Nakajima

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  1. Shin Nakajima
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Correspondence to Shin Nakajima .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Hosei University, Tokyo, Japan

    Shaoying Liu

  2. Xidian University, Xi’an, China

    Zhenhua Duan

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Nakajima, S. (2015). Using Alloy in Introductory Courses of Formal Methods. In: Liu, S., Duan, Z. (eds) Structured Object-Oriented Formal Language and Method. SOFL+MSVL 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8979. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17404-4_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17404-4_7

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-17403-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-17404-4

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