Fme 96 Industrial Benefit And Advances In Formal Methods

This book presents the refereed proceedings of the Third International Symposium of Formal Methods Europe, FME '96, held in Oxford, UK, in March 1996. FME '96 was co-sponsored by IFIP WG 14.3 and devoted to "the application and demonstrated industrial benefit of formal methods, their new horizons and strengthened foundations". The 35 full revised papers included were selected from a total of 103 submissions; also included are three invited papers. The book addresses all relevant aspects of formal methods, from the point of view of the industrial R & D professional as well as from the academic viewpoint, and impressively documents the significant progress in the use of formal methods for the solution of real-world problems.

FME 2001 is the tenth in a series of meetings organized every eighteen months by Formal Methods Europe (FME), an independent association whose aim is to stimulate the use of, and research on, formal methods for software development. It follows four VDM Europe Symposia, four other Formal Methods Europe S- posia, and the 1999 World Congress on Formal Methods in the Development of Computing Systems. These meetings have been notably successful in bringing - gether a community of users, researchers, and developers of precise mathematical methods for software development. FME 2001 took place in Berlin, Germany and was organized by the C- puter Science Department of the Humboldt-Universit ̈at zu Berlin. The theme of the symposium was Formal Methods for Increasing Software Productivity. This theme recognizes that formal methods have the potential to do more for industrial software development than enhance software quality { they can also increase productivity at many di erent points in the software life-cycle. The importance of the theme is borne out by the many contributed papers showing how formal methods can make software development more e cient. There is an emphasis on tools that nd errors automatically, or with relatively little human e ort. There is also an emphasis on the use of formal methods to assist with critical, labor-intensive tasks such as program design and test-case generation.

ThisvolumecontainstheproceedingsofFM2003,the12thInternationalFormal Methods Europe Symposium which was held in Pisa, Italy on September 8–14, 2003. Formal Methods Europe (FME, www. fmeurope. org) is an independent - sociation which aims to stimulate the use of and research on formal methods for system development. FME conferences began with a VDM Europe symposium in 1987. Since then, the meetings have grown and have been held about once - ery 18 months. Throughout the years the symposia have been notably successful in bringing together researchers, tool developers, vendors, and users, both from academia and from industry. Unlike previous symposia in the series, FM 2003 was not given a speci?c theme. Rather, its main goal could be synthesized as “widening the scope. ” Indeed, the organizers aimed at enlarging the audience and impact of the symposium along several directions. Dropping the su?x ‘E’ from the title of the conference re?ects the wish to welcome participation and contribution from every country; also,contributionsfromoutsidethetraditionalFormalMethodscommunitywere solicited. The recent innovation of including an Industrial Day as an important part of the symposium shows the strong commitment to involve industrial p- ple more and more within the Formal Methods community. Even the traditional and rather fuzzy borderline between “software engineering formal methods” and methods and formalisms exploited in di?erent ?elds of engineering was so- what challenged.

Since its first volume in 1960, Advances in Computers has presented detailed coverage of innovations in hardware and software and in computer theory, design, and applications. It has also provided contributors with a medium in which they can examine their subjects in greater depth and breadth than that allowed by standard journal articles. As a result, many articles have become standard references that continue to be of significant, lasting value despite the rapid growth taking place in the field.

This book presents the refereed proceedings of the Third International Symposium of Formal Methods Europe, FME '96, held in Oxford, UK, in March 1996. FME '96 was co-sponsored by IFIP WG 14.3 and devoted to "the application and demonstrated industrial benefit of formal methods, their new horizons and strengthened foundations". The 35 full revised papers included were selected from a total of 103 submissions; also included are three invited papers. The book addresses all relevant aspects of formal methods, from the point of view of the industrial R & D professional as well as from the academic viewpoint, and impressively documents the significant progress in the use of formal methods for the solution of real-world problems.

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, is a result, and a measure, of this new-found maturity. It brings an impressive array of industrial and applications-oriented papers that show how formal methods have been used to tackle real problems. These proceedings are a record of the technical symposium ofFM’99:alo- side the papers describingapplicationsofformalmethods,youwill ndtechnical reports,papers,andabstracts detailing new advances in formaltechniques,from mathematical foundations to practical tools. The World Congress is the successor to the four Formal Methods Europe Symposia, which in turn succeeded the four VDM Europe Symposia. This s- cession re?ects an increasing openness within the international community of researchers and practitioners: papers were submitted covering a wide variety of formal methods and application areas. The programmecommittee re?ects the Congress’s international nature, with a membership of 84 leading researchersfrom 38 di erent countries.The comm- tee was divided into 19 tracks, each with its own chair to oversee the reviewing process. Our collective task was a di cult one: there were 259 high-quality s- missions from 35 di erent countries.

The refereed proceedings of the Third International Conference of Z and B Users, ZB 2003, held in Turku, Finland in June 2003. The 28 revised full papers presented together with 3 invited papers were carefully reviewed and selected for inclusion in the book. The book documents the recent advances for the Z formal specification notation and for the B method, spanning the full scope from foundational, theoretical, and methodological issues to advanced applications, tools, and case studies.