Practical Issues with Formal Specifications: Lessons Learned from an Industrial Case Study

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.

Further Reading:
This presentation is based on the following publication:
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/

Please cite this work as follows:
M. Altenhofen and A. D. Brucker, “Practical issues with formal specifications: Lessons learned from an industrial case study,” presented at the FMICS 2010, Antwerp, Belgium, Sep. 21, 2010. Author copy: https://logicalhacking.com/publications/talk-altenhofen.ea-issues-2010/

BibTeX
@Unpublished{ talk:altenhofen.ea:issues:2010,
  date       = {2010-09-21},
  author     = {Michael Altenhofen and Achim D. Brucker},
  lecturer   = {Achim D. Brucker},
  title      = {Practical Issues with Formal Specifications: Lessons Learned
                from an Industrial Case Study},
  eventtitle = {{FMICS} 2010},
  venue      = {Antwerp, Belgium},
  language   = {USenglish},
  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.},
  areas      = {software, formal methods},
  note       = {Author copy: \url{https://logicalhacking.com/publications/talk-altenhofen.ea-issues-2010/}},
  pdf        = {https://logicalhacking.com/publications/talk-altenhofen.ea-issues-2010/talk-altenhofen.ea-issues-2010.pdf},
}