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PICGAL: Practical use of formal specification to develop a complex critical system

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1313))

Abstract

This paper reports on the experiment PICGAL which aims to assess the benefits of using VDM to develop high reliability related software in the space industry in a practical way. The application used in this project is a code generator from a next generation environment to be used in the development of ground application software for boosters such as ARIANE V. The experiment is constructed as a parallel development of the code generator; using the conventional approach and using formal specification. This allows detailed measurements of the effects resulting from the introduction of VDM. This work is adding to the existing body of evidence of the effect of using a moderate amount of formal methods in an industrial context in a new critical domain. This paper provides an overview of the domain, the application and it shows how the formal specification has been structured. Finally, results and key lessons are presented.

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John Fitzgerald Cliff B. Jones Peter Lucas

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© 1997 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Devauchelle, L., Larsen, P.G., Voss, H. (1997). PICGAL: Practical use of formal specification to develop a complex critical system. In: Fitzgerald, J., Jones, C.B., Lucas, P. (eds) FME '97: Industrial Applications and Strengthened Foundations of Formal Methods. FME 1997. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1313. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-63533-5_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-63533-5_12

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-63533-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-69593-6

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