How to Select the Suitable Formal Method for an Industrial Application: A Survey

The share of formal methods is still marginal in contemporary systems and software engineering. One of the reasons is the absence of systematic guidelines and evaluation criteria that help software practitioners choose the right formal method for the problem at hand. In this paper, we present a comprehensive set of criteria, based on a systematic literature review and decade-long personal experience in industrial projects, for evaluating and comparing different formal methods. We argue that besides technical grounds e.g., modeling capabilities and supported development phases, formal methods should also be evaluated from social and industrial perspectives. At the end of the paper, we present an evaluation of "ABZ" methods based on the stipulated criteria.

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