SOFL: a formal engineering methodology for industrial applications

Summary form only given, as follows. A major challenge for formal methods is to effectively address the needs of industry and achieve wide acceptance. This challenge remains unmet, as formal methods are difficult to use and their application consumes prohibitive amounts of resource. Much research on the integration of available formal methods (e.g. Z, VDM, B-method) and either structured methodology or object-oriented methodology has been conducted to make formal methods more practical, but with limited success. No attempt has yet been made to integrate the three approaches of formal methods, structured methodology and object-oriented methodology to take advantage of the desirable features of the three approaches. As one approach to the solution of these problems, we propose a language called SOFL (Structured Object-oriented Formal Language) for system development. It supports the concept that a system can be constructed using the structured methodology in the early stages of its development, and by using object-oriented methodology at later, more detailed levels. During the complete system development process, formal methods are applied in a manner that best uses their capabilities.