Dipartimento di Informatica e Scienze dell'Informazione

Formal Methods for Software Development: Research Links

Past initiatives

• CNR-Progetto finalizzato Informatica (79-84) first development of a method for the formal specification of concurrent systems (SMoLCS), applied to define the communication architecture of CNet, a prototype campus local net
• CNR-Progetto Finalizzato Sistemi Informatici e Calcolo Parallelo (89-94) upgrading of the SMoLCS method to deal with requirement specifications and to prototype design specifications withSMoLCS/RP,a software tool
• Contract with ENEL ( National Electricity Company of Italy) (89-93) formal specification of industry test cases, with development of friendly user guides

• full draft formal definition of Ada (EEC-MAP project 1815A, with CRAI-Italy and and DDC-Denmark) the SMoLCS method upgraded to provide a method for the formal definition of programming languages with concurrent features (Egidio Astesiano in charge of the technical method) full definition, presented at a two-day seminar organized by IDA(Institute of Defence Analysis of DoD) in Triangle Park-North Carolina-USA and in an international School at CRAI-Cosenza-Italy
• ESPRIT Project DRAGON (led by TXT-Milan) Ada targeted Object oriented methods for the developmentofReal-Time concurrent systems (participation for the formal method part)
• ESPRIT-BR WGs COMPASS I(87-91),COMPASS II(92-96),ISCORE II(91-94) ESPRIT-HCM Networks MEDICIS(93-96) loosely algebraic approaches to modelling and specifying software systems

• *CoFI, the Common Framework Initiative (URL: http://www.brics.dk/Projects/CoFI ) for defining a common specification framework;E.Astesiano,G. Reggio and M.Cerioli are participating to the design and methodology groups; E.Astesiano is in charge of the coordination of the task group for extension dealing with reactive, concurrent and object-oriented systems
• FLIRTS - Formalism, Logic, Institution Relating, Translating and Structuring (Contact person Cerioli )
  FLIRTS is a forum for the community involved in research in the area of institutions, general logic, specification framework and related metatheories for formal methodologies supporting software specification.
• ETAPS/FASE, the initiative for establishing a European spring Conference on Theory and Practice of Software,federating various events raplacing TAPSOFT and ESOP/CAAP ( http://www.dcs.ed.ac.uk/~dts/etaps) The first ETAPS will take place in Lisbon (J.Fiadeiro organizer) in April 1998 and will consist of 5 conferences plus satellite events; E. Astesiano is a member of the ETAPS Steering Committee,co-responsible with Tom Maibaum of FASE (Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering) and will chair FASE 98
• EASDS, the initiative for establishing a European Association for System Development Science (tentative name); E.Astesiano is coordinating with Hartmut Ehrig the establishment of a task-force for founding the association (contact him or Hartmut Ehrig at ehrig@cs.tu-berlin.de for info)

• the researchers engaged in the CoFI initiative, especially Peter Mosses (Aarhus,Bernd Krieg-Brueckner(Bremen),Don Sannella (Edinburgh),Andrzej Tarlecki(Warsaw),Michel Bidoit(ENS-Paris),Marie-Claude Gaudel (Paris-Orsay),Martin Wirsing(Munich)
• the people of the FLIRTS community,especially Jose Meseguer (SRI-Menlo Park)),Till Mossakowski (Bremen),Amilcar Sernadas and Jose Fiadeiro (Lisbon),Andrzej Tarlecki (Warsaw),Uwe Wolter(Berlin)
• HorstReichel (Dresden) and Till Mossakowski(Bremen),coauthors withMaura Cerioli of a chapter In the IFIP WG 14.3 State of the Art Book on Foundations of Information System Specifications
• Carolyn Talcott (Stanford-Palo Alto) for ongoing joint work on abstract actor systems (with E.Astesiano.G.Reggio and R.Romano)