Formal methods are coming of age. Mathematical techniques and tools are now regarded as an important part of the development process in a wide range of industrial and governmental organisations. A transfer of technology into the mainstream of systems development is slowly, but surely, taking place. FM 99, the First World Congress on Formal Methods in the Development of Computing Systems, is a result, and a measure, of this new-found maturity. It brings an impressive array of industrial and applications-oriented papers that show how formal methods have been used to tackle real problems. These...

Formal methods are coming of age. Mathematical techniques and tools are now regarded as an important part of the development process in a wide range of industrial and governmental organisations. A transfer of technology into the mainstream of systems development is slowly, but surely, taking place. FM 99, the First World Congress on Formal Methods in the Development of Computing Systems, is a result, and a measure, of this new-found maturity. It brings an impressive array of industrial and applications-oriented papers that show how formal methods have been used to tackle real problems. These...

The LARCH family of formal specification languages and tools was originally developed in the USA. Its user community has now spread to Europe and several industrial trial firms are interested in using it in their system development programs. It differs from the other higher profile file languages such as Z and VDM in three respects: firstly, it was designed to specify programs rather than mathematical models and therefore addresses the complexities of real programs; secondly, it has been specifically developed as a practical tool for use in several major application domains; finally, it has a...