A Systematic Literature Review on a Decade of Industrial TLA+ Practice

TL;DR

This paper systematically reviews a decade of industrial TLA+ usage, analyzing trends, practical benefits, challenges, and the gap between research and industry application.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of TLA+'s industrial adoption, highlighting practical insights, challenges, and the evolution over ten years.

Findings

Growing industrial adoption of TLA+ over the decade

Identified key challenges hindering wider adoption

Insights into the practical benefits perceived by practitioners

Abstract

TLA+ is a formal specification language used for designing, modeling, documenting, and verifying systems through model checking. Despite significant interest from the research community, knowledge about usage of the TLA+ ecosystem in practice remains scarce. Industry reports suggest that software engineers could benefit from insights, innovations, and solutions to the practical challenges of TLA+. This paper explores this development by conducting a systematic literature review of TLA+'s industrial usage over the past decade. We analyze the trend in industrial application, characterize its use, examine whether its promised benefits resonate with practitioners, and identify challenges that may hinder further adoption.