Formal Methods in Industry

The application of formal methods in industry has progressed extensively over the past decade and the results are promising. But despite these achievements and it have been documented in numerous studies, it is still very common the skepticism about its usefulness and applicability. The goal of this paper is to show that its evolution over the past decade exceeds all previous processes and each time they do a better job to satisfy industrial needs. This is achieved by the description of some experiments and the result of various applications in industry and through an analyzing of the needs of companies that must be satisfy the research community in this field

Formal verification, scientific code, and the epistemological heterogeneity of computational science

Various errors can affect scientific code and detecting them is a central concern within computational science. Could formal verification methods, which are now available tools, be widely adopted to guarantee the general reliability of scientific code? After discussing their benefits and drawbacks, we claim that, absent significant changes as regards features like their user-friendliness and versatility, these methods are unlikely to be adopted throughout computational science, beyond certain specific contexts for which they are well-suited. This issue exemplifies the epistemological heterogeneity of computational science: profoundly different practices can be appropriate to meet the reliability challenge that rises for scientific code

Managing Complexity in Software Development with Formally Based Tools

Over the past two decades, formal methods researchers have produced a number of powerful software tools designed to detect errors in, and to verify properties of, hardware designs, software systems, and software system artifacts. Mostly used in the past to debug hardware designs, in future years, these tools should help developers improve the quality of software systems. They should be especially useful in developing high assurance software systems, where compelling evidence is required that the system satisfies critical properties, such as safety and security. This paper describes the di#erent roles that formally based software tools can play in improving the correctness of software and software artifacts. Such tools can help developers manage complexity by automatically exposing certain classes of software errors and by producing evidence (e.g., mechanically checked proofs, results of executing automatically generated test cases, etc.) that a software system satisfies its requirements. In addition, the tools allow practitioners to focus on development tasks best performed by people---e.g., obtaining and validating requirements and constructing a high-quality requirements specification

Model-Checking symbolique pour la vérification de systèmes et son application aux tables de décision et aux systèmes d'éditions collaboratives distribuées

Résumé Dans le cycle de vie de tout système logiciel, une phase cruciale de formalisation et de validation au moyen de vérification et/ou de test induit une identification d'erreurs probables infiltrées durant sa conception. Cette détection d'erreurs et leur correction sont avantageuses dans les premières phases de développement du système afin d'éviter tout retour aux travaux ardus d'analyse de spécifications et de modélisation du système précédant sa réalisation. Par conséquent, cette étape mise en oeuvre à travers des méthodes et des outils formels dans les phases amont de la conception contribue à augmenter la confiance des concepteurs et utilisateurs vis-à-vis de la fonctionnalité du système. L'objectif de cette maîtrise s'insère dans le cadre d'une recherche qui vise à exploiter une technique formelle spécifique d'analyse de programmes et de spécifications: l'exécution symbolique combinée au model-checking. Cette technique représente une approche émergente à laquelle les chercheurs ont porté une attention particulière ces dernières années. D'une part, l'exécution symbolique permet d'explorer les chemins d'exécution possibles d'un programme modélisant un système avec des variables d'entrée non initialisées, en d'autres termes en manipulant des variables abstraites ou "symboliques". Ces chemins caractérisent ainsi le comportement du programme de manière abstraite. D'autre part, le model-checking permet d'explorer systématiquement ces différents chemins d'exécution à l'aide d'une énumération exhaustive des états accessibles afin de générer ultérieurement des contreexemples en cas de violation de propriétés du système. De ce fait, l'exécution symbolique combinée au model-checking englobe les points forts de ces deux techniques octroyant aux concepteurs du système une compréhension accrue des situations d'erreur dans les contre-exemples ainsi générés.----------Abstract Verification is one crucial activity in any software life cycle. Its major role is to ensure an identification of potential design and implementation flaws integrated in the software system during its development process. Such an identification leads to eventual corrections in the early steps of the development cycle, thus avoiding tedious work otherwise required in the system requirements' reanalysis as well as in its remodelling preceding its deployment. As a consequence, the verification step is rigorously put into practice through formal methods and tools. Given such a formalisation contributes to give another level of insurance to both the system's designers and users. This thesis is related to a research which aims at applying one specific formal method in program and requirements analysis: symbolic execution intertwined with model checking. This technique has known a major development in the past few years, thus raising interest among researchers in the field. On one hand, symbolic execution explores all possible execution paths of a program modelling a system using uninitialised input variables. As its name implies, this specific execution deals with abstract or "symbolic" variables. Hence, those visited paths characterise the abstract program behaviour. On another hand, model checking ensures a systematic exploration of those different execution paths through an exhaustive visit of all reachable states. This approach is necessary for subsequent generation of counterexamples in case of property violations within the system. Therefore, symbolic execution along with model checking is a resulting approach enforced with advantages of both techniques. This yields a higher degree of interpreting the retrieved flaws provided through generated counterexamples, for even the most sophisticated systems

Cultura científica y cultura tecnológica

[ES]El libro recoge las actas del IV Congreso Iberoamericano de Filosofía de la Ciencia y la Tecnología, celebrado del 3 al 7 de julio de 2017 en Salamanc