The development and deployment of formal methods in the UK

TL;DR

This paper reviews the UK's significant contributions to formal methods in computer system development, highlighting key ideas, practical deployment efforts, successes, failures, and lessons for long-term impact.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the development and practical deployment of formal methods in the UK, including lessons learned from successes and failures.

Findings

UK has made major contributions to formal methods

Several deployment attempts in practice have been documented

Lessons are drawn to improve future long-term impact

Abstract

UK researchers have made major contributions to the technical ideas underpinning formal approaches to the specification and development of computer systems. Perhaps as a consequence of this, some of the significant attempts to deploy theoretical ideas into practical environments have taken place in the UK. The authors of this paper have been involved in formal methods for many years and both have tracked a significant proportion of the whole story. This paper both lists key ideas and indicates where attempts were made to use the ideas in practice. Not all of these deployment stories have been a complete success and an attempt is made to tease out lessons that influence the probability of long-term impact.