For more than a decade, researchers and engineers have been addressing the problem of the application of formal description techniques to protocol specification, implementation, testing and verification. This book identifies the many successes that have been achieved within the industrial framework and the difficulties encountered in applying theoretical methods to practical situations. Issues discussed include: testing and certification; verification; validation; environments and automated tools; formal specifications; protocol conversion; implementation; specification languages and models. Consideration is also given to the concerns surrounding education available to students and the need to upgrade and develop this through sponsorship of a study of an appropriate curriculum at both undergraduate and graduate levels. It is hoped this publication will stimulate such support and inspire further research in this important arena.

Formal Description Techniques and Protocol Specification, Testing and Verification addresses formal description techniques (FDTs) applicable to distributed systems and communication protocols. It aims to present the state of the art in theory, application, tools and industrialization of FDTs. Among the important features presented are: FDT-based system and protocol engineering; FDT-application to distributed systems; Protocol engineering; Practical experience and case studies. Formal Description Techniques and Protocol Specification, Testing and Verification comprises the proceedings of the Joint International Conference on Formal Description Techniques for Distributed Systems and Communication Protocols and Protocol Specification, Testing and Verification, sponsored by the International Federation for Information Processing, held in November 1998, Paris, France. Formal Description Techniques and Protocol Specification, Testing and Verification is suitable as a secondary text for a graduate-level course on Distributed Systems or Communications, and as a reference for researchers and practitioners in industry.

This volume presents the latest research worldwide on communications protocols, emphasizing specification and compliance testing. It presents the complete proceedings of the fifteenth meeting on `Protocol Specification, Testing and Verification' arranged by the International Federation for Information Processing.

This PSTV'94 Symposium is the fourteenth of a series of annual meetings organized under the auspices of IFIP W.G. 6.1, a Working Group dedicated to "Architectures and Protocols for Computer Networks". This is the oldest and most established symposium in the emerging field of protocol engineering which has spawn many international conferences including FORTE (International Conference on Formal Description Tech niques), IWPTS (International Workshop on Protocol Test Systems), ICNP (Interna tional Conference on Network Protocols) and CAY (Conference on Computer-Aided Verification). The main objective of this PSTV symposium is to provide a forum for researchers and practitioners in industry and academia interested in advances in using formal methods and methodologies to specify, develop, test and verify communication protocols and distributed systems. This year's PSTV symposium enjoys a nice mixture of formal methods and practical issues in network protocols through the invited addresses of three outstanding speakers, Ed Brinksma (University of Twente), Raj Jain (Ohio State University) and David Tennenhouse (MIT) as well as 5 tutorials, in addition to 9 techni cal sessions and two practical panel sessions. The 5 tutorials are offered on the first day in two parallel tracks for intensive exposure on hot topics of current interest. This year, out of 51 submissions the Program Committee selected 18 regular papers (with an allotment of 16 pages in the Proceedings) and 9 mini-papers (of 8 pages).

FORTE/PSTV '97 addresses Formal Description Techniques (FDTs) applicable to Distributed Systems and Communication Protocols (such as Estelle, LOTOS, SDL, ASN.1, TTCN, Z, Automata, Process Algebra, Logic). The conference is a forum for presentation of the state-of-the-art in theory, application, tools and industrialization of FDTs, and provides an excellent orientation for newcomers.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the international symposium Formal Methods Europe, FME 2002, held in Copenhagen, Denmark, in July 2002. The 31 revised full papers presented together with three invited contributions were carefully reviewed and selected from 95 submissions. All current aspects of formal methods are addressed, from foundational and methodological issues to advanced application in various fields.

This book constitutes the strictly refereed proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Computer Aided Verification, CAV '97, held in Haifa, Israel, in June 1997. The volume presents 34 revised full papers selected from a total of 84 submissions. Also included are 7 invited contributions as well as 12 tool descriptions. The volume is dedicated to the theory and practice of computer aided formal methods for software and hardware verification, with an emphasis on verification tools and algorithms and the techniques needed for their implementation. The book is a unique record documenting the recent progress in the area.

A tutorial in the form of a collection of previously published papers and original material that cover current research and development in data communications protocol testing--including test suite generation and practice--and present essential practical experience in harnessing theory for protocol testing. Includes a glossary of terms. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Testing often accounts for more than 50% of the required e?ort during system development.Thechallengeforresearchistoreducethesecostsbyprovidingnew methods for the speci?cation and generation of high-quality tests. Experience has shown that the use of formal methods in testing represents a very important means for improving the testing process. Formal methods allow for the analysis andinterpretationofmodelsinarigorousandprecisemathematicalmanner.The use of formal methods is not restricted to system models only. Test models may alsobeexamined.Analyzingsystemmodelsprovidesthepossibilityofgenerating complete test suites in a systematic and possibly automated manner whereas examining test models allows for the detection of design errors in test suites and their optimization with respect to readability or compilation and execution time. Due to the numerous possibilities for their application, formal methods have become more and more popular in recent years. The Formal Approaches in Software Testing (FATES) workshop series also bene?ts from the growing popularity of formal methods. After the workshops in Aalborg (Denmark, 2001), Brno (Czech Republic, 2002) and Montr ́ eal (Canada, 2003), FATES 2004 in Linz (Austria) was the fourth workshop of this series. Similar to the workshop in 2003, FATES 2004 was organized in a?liation with the IEEE/ACM Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2004). FATES 2004 received 41 submissions. Each submission was reviewed by at least three independent reviewers from the Program Committee with the help of some additional reviewers. Based on their evaluations, 14 full papers and one wo- in-progress paper from 11 di?erent countries were selected for presentation.