Abstract
Formal methods may be at the crossroads of acceptance by a wider industrial community. In order for the techniques to become widely used, the gap between theorists and practitioners must be bridged effectively. In particular, safety-critical systems offer an application area where formal methods may be engaged usefully to the benefit of all. This paper discusses some of the issues concerned with the general acceptance of formal methods and concludes with a summary of the current position and how the formal methods community could proceed to improve matters in the future.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Safety related computer controlled systems market study. A review for the Department of Trade and Industry by Coopers & Lybrand in association with SRD-AEA Technology and Benchmark Research (HMSO, London, 1992)
The Procurement of Safety Critical Software in Defence Equipment (Part 1: Requirements, Part 2: Guidance). Interim Defence Standard 00-55, Issue 1, Ministry of Defence, Directorate of Standardization, Kentigern House, 65 Brown Street, Glasgow G2 8EX, UK (5 April 1991)
Barden, R., Stepney, S., Cooper, D.: The use of Z. In Nicholls, J.E. (ed.): Z User Workshop, York 1991 (Springer-Verlag, Workshops in Computing, 1992) pp. 99–124
Barroca, L., McDermid, J.: Formal methods: use and relevance for the development of safety critical systems. The Computer Journal 35 6 (December 1992)
Bjørner, D.: Trusted computing systems: the ProCoS experience. Proc. 14th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE), Melbourne, Australia (11–14 May 1992)
Blyth, D., Bolddyreff, C., Ruggles, C., Tetteh-Lartey, N.: The case for formal methods in standards. IEEE Software (September 1990) 65–67
Bowen, J.P.: Formal specification in Z as a design and documentation tool. Second IEE/BCS Conference, Software Engineering 88, Conference Publication No. 290 (July 1988) pp. 164–168
Bowen, J.P.: Towards verified systems (Elsevier, Real-time Safety-critical Systems Series, 1993) In preparation
Bowen, J.P., Stavridou, V.: Safety-critical systems, formal methods and standards. Technical Report PRG-TR-5-92, Programming Research Group, Oxford University Computing Laboratory, UK (1992) Revised version to appear in the Software Engineering Journal
Bowen, J.P., Stavridou, V.: Formal methods and software safety. In [17] (1992) pp. 93–98
Buxton, J.N., Malcolm, R.: Software technology transfer. Software Engineering Journal 6 1 (January 1991) 17–23
Coleman, D.: The technology transfer of formal methods: what's going wrong? Proc. 12th ICSE Workshop on Industrial Use of Formal Methods, Nice, France (March 1990)
Craigen, D., Gerhart, S., Ralston, T.J.: An international survey of industrial applications of formal methods. Atomic Energy Control Board of Canada, U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, and U.S. Naval Research Laboratories (1993) To appear
Craigen, D., Gerhart, S., Ralston, T.J.: Formal methods reality check: industrial usage. In Formal Methods Europe Symposium (FME'93) (Springer-Verlag, LNCS, 1993) In this volume
Deransart, P.: Prolog standardisation: the usefulness of a formal specification, on comp.lang.prolog, comp.specification and comp.software-eng electronic usenet newsgroups (October 1992)
Dyer, M.: The Cleanroom approach to quality software development (Wiley Series in Software Engineering Practice, 1992)
Frey, H.H. (ed.): Safety of computer control systems 1992 (SAFECOMP'92). Computer Systems in Safety-critical Applications, Proc. IFAC Symposium, Zürich, Switzerland, 28–30 October 1992 (Pergamon Press, 1992)
Good, D.I., Young, W.D.: Mathematical methods for digital system development. In Prehn, S., Toetenel, W.J. (eds.): VDM '91, Formal Software Development Methods, Volume 2: Tutorials (Springer-Verlag, LNCS 552, 1991) pp. 406–430
Guiho, G., Hennebert, C.: SACEM software validation. Proc. 12th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) (IEEE Computer Society Press, March 1990) pp. 186–191
Hall, J.A.: Seven myths of formal methods. IEEE Software (September 1990) 11–19
Harrison, M.D.: Engineering human error tolerant software. In Nicholls, J.E. (ed.): Z User Workshop, York 1991 (Springer-Verlag, Workshops in Computing, 1992) pp. 191–204
Hill, J.V.: Software development methods in practice. Proc. COMPASS '91: 6th Annual Conference on Computer Assurance (1991)
Hoare, C.A.R.: Let's make models. In Baeten, J.C.M., Klop, J.W. (eds.): Proc. CONCUR '90 (Springer-Verlag, LNCS 458, 1990)
Houston, I., King, S: CICS project report: experiences and results from the use of Z in IBM. In Prehn, S., Toetenel, W.J. (eds.): VDM '91, Formal Software Development Methods (Springer-Verlag, LNCS 551, 1991) pp. 588–603
IEEE standard glossary of software engineering terminology. In IEEE Software Engineering Standards Collection (Elsevier Applied Science, 1991)
Josephs, M.B., Redmund-Pyle, D.: Entity-relationship models expressed in Z: a synthesis of structured and formal methods, Technical Report PRG-TR-20-91, Programming Research Group, Oxford University Computing Laboratory, UK (July 1991)
Learmount, D.: Airline safety review: human factors. Flight International 142 4238 (22–28 July 1992) 30–33
Liskov, B., Guttag, J.: Abstraction and Specification in Program Development (MIT Press, 1986)
MacKenzie, D.: Computers, formal proof, and the law courts. Notices of the American Mathematical Society 39 9 (November 1992) 1066–1069
May, D., Barrett, G., Shepherd, D.: Designing chips that work. In Hoare, C.A.R., Gordon, M.J.C. (eds.): Mechanized reasoning and hardware design (Prentice Hall International Series in Computer Science, 1992) pp. 3–19
Moore, J.S. et al., Special issue on system verification. Journal of Automated Reasoning 5 4 (1989) 409–530
Neesham, C.: Safe conduct. Computing (12 November 1992) 18–20
Nicholls, J.E.: A survey of Z courses in the UK. In Nicholls, J.E. (ed.), Z User Workshop, Oxford 1990 (Springer-Verlag, Workshops in Computing, 1991) pp. 343–350
Normington, G.: Cleanroom and Z. In Bowen, J.P., Nicholls, J.E. (eds.), Z User Workshop, London 1992 (Springer-Verlag, Workshops in Computing, 1993) To appear
Pyle, I.: Software engineers and the IEE. Software Engineering Journal 1 2 (March 1986) 66–68
Potocki de Montalk, J.P.: Computer software in civil aircraft. Microprocessors and Microsystems. In Cullyer, W.J. (ed.): Special issue on safety critical systems (1993) To appear
Ravn, A.P., Stavridou, V.: Project organisation. In Bjørner, D., Langmaack, H., Hoare, C.A.R.: Provably Correct Systems, chapter 9, part 1, ESPRIT BRA 3104 ProCoS Technical Report (1992) Available from Department of Computer Science, DTH, Lyngby, Denmark
Redmill, F., Anderson, T.: Safety-critical systems — current issues, techniques and standards (Chapman and Hall, 1993)
Stein, R.M.: Safety by formal design. BYTE (August 1992) p. 157
Stepney, S., Barden, R., Cooper, D. (eds.): Object orientation in Z (Springer-Verlag, Workshops in Computing, 1992)
Thomas, M.C.: The industrial use of formal methods. Microprocessors and Microsystems. In Cullyer, W.J. (ed.): Special issue on safety critical systems (1993) To appear
Tierney, M.: The evolution of Def Stan 00-55 and 00-56: an intensification of the “formal methods debate” in the UK. Proc. Workshop on Policy Issues in Systems and Software Development, Science Policy Research Unit, Brighton, UK (July 1991)
Wallace, D.R., Kuhn, D.R., Ippolito, L.M.: An analysis of selected software safety standards. IEEE AES Magazine (August 1992) 3–14
Wing, J.M., Zaremski, A.M.: Unintrusive ways to integrate formal specifications in practice. In Prehn, S., Toetenel, W.J. (eds.), VDM '91, Formal Software Development Methods (Springer-Verlag, LNCS 551, 1991) pp. 547–569
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1993 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Bowen, J., Stavridou, V. (1993). The industrial take-up of formal methods in safety-critical and other areas: A perspective. In: Woodcock, J.C.P., Larsen, P.G. (eds) FME '93: Industrial-Strength Formal Methods. FME 1993. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 670. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0024646
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0024646
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-56662-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-47623-8
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive