Formal Methods in Industry: The State of Practice of Formal Methods in South America and Far East

Abstract

The use of formal methods has constantly increased, al- though with basically two constraints: their use has been concentrated mostly in Europe, their Mother land and they have been used only by big companies which are in charge to develop some kind of safety critical applications, what, in a first look seems correct. The aim of this paper is to present the usage stage of formal methods in other parts of the world, mainly South America, and Far East. A personal comparison of some formal method tools, namely: Atelier B[1], RODIN[2], and SCADE[3]is also presented. The comparison methodology is based on three different points of view: capability, I mean, how these tools can satisfy project constraints, usability, basically, what’s the difficulty the user faces when trying to use the tool, and adequacy to the current development pro- cess.This work describes also real applications in industry, sometimes not the formal method usage itself, but how the formal method culture can drasticaly helps on the development process. Finally, some of the gaps in industry wishes that could be fulfilled by some applications are sorted.