This book presents current methods for dealing with software reliability, illustrating the advantages and disadvantages of each method. The description of the techniques is intended for a non-expert audience with some minimal technical background. It also describes some advanced techniques, aimed at researchers and practitioners in software engineering. This reference will serve as an introduction to formal methods and techniques and will be a source for learning about various ways to enhance software reliability. Various projects and exercises give readers hands-on experience with the various formal methods and tools.

A new text/reference on formal method and techniques and tools for software development project design. Essential book for software engineers in R&D departments in industry, as well as for graduate students.

From the reviews:

"The book covers a wide range of formal methods and how to use them to specify, verify and test software systems. the book will provide a good, gentle introduction to the field with many pointers to more in-depth material. I strongly recommend this book for anyone interested in using formal methods to develop reliable software. The book presents a very good introduction to the field and covers the state-of-the-art in software reliability methods." (Michael Leuschel, Software Testing, Verification and Reliability, Vol. 2 (2), November, 2001)

Inhalt

1. Introduction.- 2. Preliminaries.- 3. Logic and Theorem Proving.- 4. Modeling Software Systems.- 5. Formal Specification.- 6. Automatic Verification.- 7. Deductive Software Verification.- 8. Process Algebra and Equivalences.- 9. Software Testing.- 10. Combining Formal Methods.- 11. Visualization.- 12. Conclusions.- References.