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The First Twenty-Five Years of Industrial Use of the B-Method

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Formal Methods for Industrial Critical Systems (FMICS 2020)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 12327))

Abstract

The B-Method has an interesting history, where language and tools have evolved over the years. This not only led to considerable research and progress in the area of formal methods, but also to numerous industrial applications, in particular in the railway domain. We present a survey of the industrial usage of the B-Method since the first toolset in 1993 and the inauguration of the driverless metro line 14 in Paris in 1999. We discuss the various areas of applications, from software development to data validation and on to systems modelling. The evolution of the tooling landscape is also analysed, and we present an assessment of the current situation, lessons learned and possible new directions.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Consisting of Alsthom (today Alstom), Compagnie des Signaux (today Hitachi), and Matra Transport (today Siemens Transportation, France).

  2. 2.

    Which is the justification for the title of this article.

  3. 3.

    Initially the ProB team was unaware of the development of OVADO.

  4. 4.

    See the site (accessed 25/5/2020): https://www.alstom.com/our-solutions/signalling/urbalis-cbtc-range-future-signalling-systems.

  5. 5.

    See https://wiki.event-b.org/index.php/CamilleX.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to show our gratitude to Jean-Raymond Abrial, who provided us with sources, discussions, insider information and knowledge from his personal experiences developing B and Event-B. We also thank the reviewers of FMICS for their extensive feedback and suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut für Informatik, Universität Düsseldorf, Universitätsstr. 1, 40225, Düsseldorf, Germany

    Philipp Körner, Sebastian Krings & Michael Leuschel

  2. University of Southampton University Road, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK

    Michael Butler

  3. CLEARSY, 320 avenue Archimède, 13100, Aix-en-Provence, France

    Thierry Lecomte & Luis-Fernando Mejia

  4. Systerel, 1090 rue René Descartes, 13100, Aix-en-Provence, France

    Laurent Voisin

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  1. Michael Butler
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  2. Philipp Körner
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  4. Thierry Lecomte
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  5. Michael Leuschel
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  6. Luis-Fernando Mejia
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Correspondence to Philipp Körner or Michael Leuschel .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. ISTI, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Pisa, Italy

    Maurice H. ter Beek

  2. AIT Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH, Vienna, Austria

    Dejan Ničković

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Butler, M. et al. (2020). The First Twenty-Five Years of Industrial Use of the B-Method. In: ter Beek, M.H., Ničković, D. (eds) Formal Methods for Industrial Critical Systems. FMICS 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12327. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58298-2_8

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