Formal methods application: an empirical tale of software development

Formal Methods Application: An Empirical Tale of Software Development

ÐThe development of an elevator scheduling system by undergraduate students is presented. The development was performed by 20 teams of undergraduate students, divided into two groups. One group produced specifications by employing a formal method that involves only first-order logic. The other group used no formal analysis. The solutions of the groups are compared using the metrics of code corr...

Response to "Comments on 'Formal Methods Application: An Empirical Tale of Software Development'"

We respond to criticism by D. Berry and W. Tichy of our paper that appeared in the March 2002 issue of IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering. Many of the supposed faults they identify in our experiment are a result of a misunderstanding on their part, while others are inherent aspects of an educational experiment. We present counterarguments that explain why our experiment is valid.

Comments on "Formal Methods Application: An Empirical Tale of Software Development"

We comment on the experimental design and the result of the paper mentioned in the title. Our purpose is to show interested readers examples of what can go wrong with experiments in software research and how to avoid the

A Tale of Two Paradigms: Formal Methods and Software Testing

There are two camps of software developers: formal methods advocates battling against traditionalist supporters of software testing and assessment metrics. Surely, as Turing observed, we will (must) never do away with testing in some form. But clearly, formal methods cannot be ignored, and must be the basis of quality assurance in some form. Important impacts of speciications on testing are in ...

A Survey of Formal Software Development Methods