
By Michael Altenhofen and Achim D. Brucker.
Many software companies still seem to be reluctant to use formal specifications in their development processes. Nevertheless, the trend towards implementing critical business applications in distributed environments makes such applications an attractive target for formal methods. Additionally, the rising complexity also increases the willingness of the development teams to apply formal techniques. In this paper, we report on our experiences in formally specifying several core components of one of our commercially available products. While writing the formal specification, we experienced several issues that had a noticeable consequences on our work. While most of these issues can be attributed to the specific method and tools we have used, we do consider some of the problems as more general, impeding the practical application of formal methods, especially by non-experts, in large scale industrial development.
Keywords: ASM, industrial case study, formal specification
Supplementary material: [ Slides ]
Please cite this work as follows: M. Altenhofen and A. D. Brucker, “Practical issues with formal specifications: Lessons learned from an industrial case study,” in International workshop on formal methods for industrial critical systems (FMICS), S. Kowalewski and M. Roveri, Eds. Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 2010, pp. 17–32. doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-15898-8_2. Author copy: https://logicalhacking.com/publications/altenhofen.ea-issues-2010/
@InCollection{ altenhofen.ea:issues:2010,
author = {Michael Altenhofen and Achim D. Brucker},
booktitle = {International Workshop on Formal Methods for Industrial
Critical Systems (FMICS)},language = {USenglish},
title = {Practical Issues with Formal Specifications: Lessons Learned
from an Industrial Case Study},year = {2010},
abstract = {Many software companies still seem to be reluctant to use
formal specifications in their development processes.
Nevertheless, the trend towards implementing critical business
applications in distributed environments makes such
applications an attractive target for formal methods.
Additionally, the rising complexity also increases the
willingness of the development teams to apply formal
techniques. In this paper, we report on our experiences in
formally specifying several core components of one of our
commercially available products. While writing the formal
specification, we experienced several issues that had a
noticeable consequences on our work. While most of these
issues can be attributed to the specific method and tools we
have used, we do consider some of the problems as more
general, impeding the practical application of formal methods,
especially by non-experts, in large scale industrial
development.},keywords = {ASM, industrial case study, formal specification},
editor = {Stefan Kowalewski and Marco Roveri},
publisher = {Springer-Verlag },
address = {Heidelberg },
doi = {10.1007/978-3-642-15898-8_2},
series = {Lecture Notes in Computer Science },
number = {6371},
pages = {17--32},
areas = {formal methods},
note = {Author copy: \url{https://logicalhacking.com/publications/altenhofen.ea-issues-2010/}},
pdf = {https://logicalhacking.com/publications/altenhofen.ea-issues-2010/altenhofen.ea-issues-2010.pdf},
}