Feature-Oriented Modelling Using Event-B

Event-B is a formal method for specification and verification of reactive systems. Its Rodin toolkit provides comprehensive support for modelling, refinement and analysis using theorem proving, animation and model checking. There has always been a need to reuse existing models and their associated proofs when modelling related systems to save time and effort. Software product lines (SPLs) focus on the problem of reuse by providing ways to build software products having commonalities and managing variations within products of the same family. Feature modelling is a well know technique to manage variability and configure products within the SPLs. We have combined the two approaches to formally specify SPLs using Event-B. This will contribute the concept of formalism to SPLs and re-usability to Event-B. Existing feature modelling notations were adapted and extended to include refinement mechanism of Event-B. An Eclipse-based graphical feature modelling tool has been developed as a plug-in to the Rodin platform. We have modelled the "production cell" case-study in Event-B, an industrial metal processing plant, which has previously been specified in a number of formalisms. We have also highlighted future directions based on our experience with this framework so far

Practically Applicable Formal Methods

Abstract. Formal methods are considered to be highly expensive. There-fore, they are currently applied almost only in high risk software develop-ment. In this paper, we show that formal techniques can be also efficiently used in standard large-scale applications. We focus on the generation of specifications which state the termination condition of for loops in Java code (expressed as so called Java Modeling Language decreases clauses). We demonstrate that with help of relatively simple techniques it is pos-sible to successfully generate the clauses for almost 80 % of the loops in a number of widely deployed applications. Moreover, it turns out that the remaining 20 % cases contain loops which should be carefully reviewed by software quality assurance personnel. The results show that our tech-nique might be helpful in spreading the usage of formal methods onto typical business software

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