Synopses & Reviews
This volume contains the papers presented at the 6th Refinement Workshop which was held in London from 5 - 7 January 1994. The theme of the workshop was the theory and practice of formal software development, and papers with industrial relevance were particularly encouraged. The papers address both the formal mathematical infrastructure of methods, and the practical application of formal development methods in commerce and industry. Among the specific topics covered are the formal development of authentication protocols, operation semantics with read and write frames, and the testing and safety analysis of abstract machine specifications. This volume will be of interest to academic and industrial researchers, postgraduate students, and research-oriented developers in the computer industry. The proceedings of the previous three Refinement Workshops are also available in the series.
Synopsis
The Sixth Refinement Workshop took place at City University in London from 5th to 7th January 1994. The present volume includes all of the papers which were submitted and accepted for presentation, together with two papers by invited speakers. The workshops in the series have generally occurred at one year intervals but in this last case a two year period had elapsed. These workshops have established themselves as an important event in the calendar for all those who are interested in progress in the underlying theory of refinement and in the take-up by industry of the methods supported by that theory. One of the proposed themes of the sixth workshop was the reporting of successful adoption in industry of rigorous software development methods. The programme committee was perhaps slightly disappointed by the response from industry to the call in this respect. However, the recent period could be characterised as one of consolidation, when those companies which have made the decision that formal development methods are important to their business have been adopting them where appropriate and finding them to be worthwhile. On the other hand, . the difficult economic climate which exists in most parts of the developed world is perhaps not the context within which companies still dubious about the benefits are goil'\g to opt for making major changes in their working practices.