Hossein Saiedian. An invitation to formal methods. IEEE Computer, 29(4):16--30, April 1996.  Home/Search   Document Not in Database   Summary   Related Articles   Check

....of mathematically rigorous design techniques, advertises these benefits, yet industry remains skeptical. A recent IEEE Computer roundtable discussion on this skepticism cited several variations on an underlying problem: incompatibility between industrial practice and formal methods tools [73]. On the application level, tools often lack adequate support for industrial style problems. On the usability level, designers find formal notations and cumbersome and unnatural. Although both are widely acknowledged problems, the former seems to receive more research attention than the latter. ....

....5.11: Corrected version of the floor manager ASM chart Conclusions The principles, objects, and relationships offered by [finite state machines, typed set theory, algebra, logic] are absurdly different from the principles, objects, and relationships about which these engineers are concerned. [73] Pamela Zave It is particularly important that you understand our approach to the details of digital hardware. The overriding emphasis is to let the problem solution dictate the hardware, rather than allowing premature commitments to hardware to coerce the solution. 70] Franklin P. Prosser ....

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Hossein Saiedian. An invitation to formal methods. IEEE Computer, 29(4):16--30, April 1996.

.... project endeavors to address the numerous articles in the current literature expressing the belief that the current educational program offered for a computer science degree does not stress the fundamental mathematical and engineering principles that should form the basis of software engineering [4]. A software engineer must gain a thorough understanding of mathematical and engineering principles before he or she can apply formal analysis when creating software in the classroom. A student must also gain experience in applying formal analysis to industrial applications in order to reinforce ....

Saiedian, H., "An Invitation to Formal Methods", Computer, Vol. 29, No. 4, April 1996, pp. 16-30.

.... been used to describe Specifications and Implementations (broadly categorised under logic based, automata based and hybrid formalisms) but almost all seem to suffer of syntactical complexity in order to represent the temporal evolution of real systems and of restricted flexibility in abstraction [5, 6, 4, 10]. By contrast, EAs reveal a good syntactical simplicity, thanks to which our descriptions may result quickly understandable and are so flexible that they can be tailored to any levels of abstraction. See Appendix A for a brief introduction to the formalism) 2 3 The formal verification of the ....

Hossein Saiedian. An Invitation to Formal Methods. IEEE Computer, vol.29, n.4, April

....can be described at its best as poor. Formal methods have been used with success in hardware development [Hei98] but in software development they have been used rarely, their use being restricted mainly to safety critical software. Many reasons have been suggested for this in the literature [Sai96, Hal90a, Hoa96, Str89, Rus93] some of the most common being: 1. Problems finding the right level of abstraction. 2. Lack of education (on the user s part) 3. Hard to write good specifications. 4. Difficult to understand (highly specialised) 5. Absence of structure and method. 1 ....

H. Saiedian. An invitation to formal methods. IEEE Computing, April 1996.

....challenging practical application domain for graph grammars. Keywords Formal Methods, Software Specification, Graph Grammars, Rule Based Translation. 1 Introduction Despite the enormous amount of investments in research and development, industrial applications of formal methods are negligible [8, 20]. Industrial strength tools produced in the last decade ( 15, 16] and educational effort of many universities suggest that lack of automation and skills are not the key obstacles to the use of formal methods, as often claimed. The real obstacles in applying formal methods in industry can be found ....

SAIEDIAN, H. An Invitation to Formal Methods. IEEE Computer (April 1996), 16--30.

....cohesive sets of techniques that effectively cover the software development process. In this paper we present some of the experiences we gained in developing and applying an integrated requirements and design modeling approach. 1. Introduction Though formal specification techniques (FSTs) [Saie96] have existed for over two decades, their uptake in industry has been very slow. Early FSTs were mostly textual, utilized mathematical notations, and often required a mathematical maturity beyond the experiences of most software developers. Furthermore, creating and understanding formal ....

Hossein Saiedian (ed.), "An Invitation to Formal Methods", Computer 29(4), 1996.

....coverage of a system s behaviour. Also, while sophisticated test generation techniques exist, the sheer size of systems makes accurate and complete testing more and more dicult and expensive. Veri cation, a mathematical proof of the correctness of a design or implementation using formal methods [15, 42, 59, 60, 61, 67], o ers another avenue in ensuring the correctness of software. The main advantages of formal methods over the traditional methods of testing and debugging are not only that they provide reliability, but that they have the potential to reduce the cost of software. Despite these advantages, formal ....

H. Saiedian. An Invitation to Formal Methods. Computer, 29(4):16-30, April 1996.

....to go to a level of formality beyond their needs (and abilities) while at the same time not losing the benefits of precise documentation that makes clear what each piece of code is designed to do. A number of other writers have been expressing similar opinions in recent years (see, e.g. [14] and [2, pp. 74 75] The general principle is that there is an appropriate level of formality for every situation, and more rigor is not always better. If this is not yet the consensus of the formal methods community, perhaps it eventually will be. Acknowledgement: We are indebted to Steve ....

Hossein Saiedian, ed. "An invitation to formal methods." Computer 29, 4 (April 1996), pp. 16--30. See particularly the contributions of Jones, Jackson and Wing, and Lutz.

....thus re design at the code level can result in inadequate impact analysis that can lead to future problems. The need to uncover and correct software defects during the requirements analysis and design phases of software development has led to interest in Formal Specification Techniques (FSTs) [Hall96,Lars96,Saie96]. FSTs are mathematically based techniques that provide formal notations for precisely modeling system properties and mechanisms for analyzing the formal models. They are used at the requirements and design phases primarily to uncover ambiguities, missing details, and inconsistencies in ....

Hossein Saiedian (ed.), "An Invitation to Formal Methods", Computer 29(4), 1996.

....activities relate to software systems ranging from video games, telecommunication, and banking to nuclear power plants. Software systems are ubiquitous and have become an important part of today s society (the software cost in the year 2000 will be close to 600 billion( 300 billion in US) Sai96] Therefore, the assurance of software systems has become a basic requirement of the information age. When compared to software engineering s significance and broad application areas, the field s inability to provide secure and reliable products seems like a failure. This deficiency has become ....

Hossein Saiedian. An invitation to formal methods. In IEEE Computer, April 1996.

....lacks sufficient emphasis on mathematics and engineering science. Goals and Objectives Multiple articles have appeared in major ACM and IEEE computer science journals questioning why, after thirty years of creation and application in academics, industry has been slow to adopt formal methods [1]. There are many different answers to this question but one probable answer stems from the average software engineer s ability to use formal methods in the context that he or she would need to use them. A software engineer can only be expected to apply formal analysis to industrial problems once ....

Saiedian, H., An Invitation to Formal Methods, Computer, Vol. 29, No. 4, April 1996, pp. 16-30.

....correct software and or hardware systems that are well structured and maintainable. However, there still exists practitioners skepticism on the viability of formal methods in industrial practice. What effectively bridges the chasm between academics and practitioners is still an open problem [5]. Rare powerful, easy to use support tools are one of serious impediments to industrial use of formal methods. Therefore, construction of a formalismbased developmental framework for more reliable systems with less effort, which can bridge the chasm, is in great demand. A Variable Structure ....

H. Saiedian, "An invitation to formal methods," IEEE Computer, pp. 16-30, Apr. 1996.

....understandable, such as summaries and overviews, alternative points of view, diagrams, and examples. R. Balzer, in [1] Recently, there have been numerous papers advocating the use of formal methods in software development (e.g. 3, 4, 5, 13, 15, 16, 19, 25] plus some of the opinions in [32]) Similar opinions were sporadically published before (e.g. 12, 18, 21, 29, 33] plus some of the opinions in [7] In these papers, members of academe and industry describe formal methods as a key contribution to overcoming the chronic software crisis. Indeed, formal specification languages ....

....some academic myths on their usefulness. However, fallacies in some assumptions underlying formal methods have been exposed, such as by pointing out essential differences between engineering and mathematics in general, and between computing and mathematics in particular (see other opinions in [7, 32]) or by shedding some light onto the real nature of requirements and specifications, so as to identify minimum standards for languages allowing their representation [23, 35] Some authors have even been begging for caution about formal methods, by mentioning fundamental theoretical and practical ....

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H. Saiedian (ed). An invitation to formal methods. IEEE Computer 29(4):16--30, April 1996.

....perform well in a homogeneous environment, but high assurance in a heterogeneous environment where disparate security models must interact requires a common formal foundation. 2.2. 3 Formal Methods Formal methods provide mathematical techniques for specifying and verifying system properties [13, 15, 56, 62]. Used properly, they can help design new systems, prove their correctness, or find ambiguities and inconsistencies in existing systems. Formal specification languages are used to define and prove important properties about computational systems. The syntax of a formal specification language is ....

H. Saiedian. An invitation to formal methods. IEEE Computer, 29(4):16--30, 1996.

....within the last several years, especially within the hardware design community [2] the acceptance and regular use of formal methods is still far less than proponents want. Formal methods researchers and practitioners have tried to analyze the causes of this lack of acceptance in opinion pieces [3, 4], case studies [5] and small experiments [6] Suggested causes include lack of adequate tools, lack of mathematical sophistication in developers, incompatibility with current techniques, high costs, and over selling by advocates. Despite reaching different conclusions, all of these attempts (my ....

Hossein Saiedian. An Invitation to Formal Methods. IEEE Computer, pages 16-30, April 1996.

....informal languages understandable, such as summaries and overviews, alternative points of view, diagrams, and examples. R. Balzer, in [1] Recently, there has been a flurry of papers advocating the use of formal methods in the software industry (see [3, 4, 5, 11, 13, 14, 16, 19] some in [23], Similar opinions were sporadically published before (some in [7] 10, 15, 18, 21, 24] Academicians, with and without industrial experience, apologetically missionarize for formal methodism, under various degrees of radicalism. Sometimes, they even berate industrial software ....

.... if these methods are not adopted, as they are perceived to be a key solution to the chronic software crisis (or plague, rather) In some cases, even practicing engineers are found preaching the gospel of formal methods to their fellow members of the industrial congregation ( 16, 19] some in [23]) Contrary to the previous papers of the myths series [16, 4] this paper is not about industry level myths on the uselessness of formal methods, but rather about the academic myths on their usefulness. True to the tradition, we discuss our own list of seven myths on formal methods, namely ....

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H. Saiedian (ed). An invitation to formal methods. IEEE Computer 29(4):16--30, April 1996.

....constructs are not used for the modeling of complex systems. This is mainly due to their lack of support for rigorous analysis, itself due to its loosely defined semantic. Formal specification techniques can provide the precision and tools needed to support rigorous analysis of modeled properties [8]. But despite their strengths, the use of existing FSTs can be difficult because of the effort needed to use them. We believe that FSTs and mature, structured OO techniques can play complementary roles. We have given an overview of our approach of such an integration, called FuZed. Our experience ....

Hossein Saiedian. An Invitation to Formal Methods. Computer, 29(4):16--30, April 1996.

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