Industrial use of formal methods
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The document discusses the industrial use of formal methods in computing, emphasizing their importance for safety, reliability, and correct implementation of specifications. It presents examples from air traffic control, particularly the UK’s National Air Traffic Services, which employs formal methodologies to enhance operational effectiveness. Challenges related to tool usage and complexity in implementation are also highlighted, alongside the necessity of training engineers in these formal approaches.
![Reflection
Oui, l'ouvre sort plus belle
D'une forme au travail
Rebelle,
Vers, marbre, onyx, émail.
[Yes, the work comes out more beautiful from a
material that resists the process, verse, marble,
onyx, or enamel.]
— Théophile Gautier (1811–1872) L'Art](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/industrialuseofformalmethods-111024103902-phpapp02/85/Industrial-use-of-formal-methods-52-320.jpg)
Industrial use of formal methods
- 1. The Industrial Use of Formal Methods: Experiences of an Optimist Prof. Jonathan P. Bowen London South Bank University University of Westminster Museophile Limited www.jpbowen.com [email protected]
- 2. Experiences of an Optimist http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Redcliffe-Maud
- 3. Background: Safety and reliability
- 4. Airbus A380 simulator Emirates Aviation College Dubai, 3 February 2011
- 5. Theory and Practice “It has long been my personal view that the separation of practical and theoretical work is artificial and injurious. Much of the practical work done in computing, both in software and in hardware design, is unsound and clumsy because the people who do it have not any clear understanding of the fundamental design principles of their work. Most of the abstract mathematical and theoretical work is sterile because it has no point of contact with real computing.” — Christopher Strachey (1916-1975)
- 6. Formal Methods • Term established by late 1970s – Next stage from structured design – Mathematical basis • Formal specification and (optionally) proof: – Validation (correct specification) – Verification (correct implementation wrt spec) • But engineers calculate rather than prove • Please contribute to the Formal Methods Wiki: – http://formalmethods.wikia.com
- 7. Z notation • Formal specification – predicate logic, set theory, and schema boxes – Courses (academia & industry) – Textbooks (reasonable choice) – Tools (type-checkers, provers, …) • Web resources – www.zuser.org • Google group – comp.specification.z • Z User Group (meetings) & Z standard
- 8. Z Standard • ISO/IEC 13568 – Long process (1990s) – Inconsistencies found! • Final Committee Draft – accepted in 2001 • Useful for tools and industrial application
- 9. Levels of Complexity – Abstraction • 25 lines of informal requirements • 250 lines of specification (e.g., Z) • 2,500 lines of design description • 25,000 lines of high-level program code • 250,000 machine instructions of object code • 2,500,000 CMOS transistors in hardware!
- 11. Choosing a formal method – difficult
- 13. Applications of Formal Methods Examples: • Tektronix (Z) • STV algorithm (VDM) • IBM CICS (Z/B) • AAMP5 microproc. (PVS) • GEC Alsthom (B) • A300/340 (Z)
- 14. Industrial-Strength Formal Methods in Practice Examples: • Motorola CAP DSP (ACL2) • Radiation Therapy Machine (Z) • ATC system (VDM) • Railways (Prover Technology) And more recently: Microsoft
- 15. National Air Traffic Services • Handled 2.2 million flights (in 2009), covering the UK and eastern North Atlantic. • And carried more than 200 million passengers safely through some of the busiest and most complex airspace in the world. • Provides air traffic control from its centres at Swanwick, Hampshire and Prestwick, Ayrshire. • Also provides air traffic control services at 15 of the UK's major airports including Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh, and Glasgow, together with air traffic services at Gibraltar Airport.
- 16. National Air Traffic Services, UK Swanwick southern England www.nats.co.uk
- 17. Flight strips on paper Last flight of Concorde
- 19. National Air Traffic Services • Advertisement & leaflet at Heathrow Airport • Air Traffic Management (ATM) • Single European Sky ATM Research (SESAR) • SESAR Joint Undertaking • www.sesarju.eu • SESAR project (2004–20)
- 20. Altran Praxis www.altran-praxis.com
- 21. Open-DO Formal Methods in Air Traffic Control Slides by Neil White www.slideshare.net/AdaCore/white-open-do www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQMWVqQfm5A Copyright © Altran Praxis
- 22. Agenda • A quick introduction – What is iFACTS? • Formal methods for Specification – Z, State machines. • Formal methods for Implementation – Implementation: SPARK. • Formal methods for Test – Verification: more Z, Mathematica. Copyright © Altran Praxis
- 23. Context • NATS, the UK’s leading air traffic services provider, has pioneered research and development of advanced air traffic control tools for several years from its simulator and research centre. The iFACTS project will deliver a subset of these tools onto the system at the company’s main en-route Control Centre at Swanwick. • Further information is available at: www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2007/03/07/222258/Nats- claims-the-biggest-air-traffic-control-innovation-since.htm Copyright © Altran Praxis
- 24. UK Air Traffic Control Copyright © Altran Praxis limited 2010
- 25. ATC team – The Notes of this slide and the previous slide give some guidance on style and usage. Planner Tactical Assistant (in/out) (controller) (flight strips) Copyright © Altran Praxis limited 2010
- 26. Why iFACTS? • iFACTS – Interim Future Area Control Tools Support – will further improve safety and provide Controllers with a set of advanced support tools, which will enable them to increase the amount of traffic they can comfortably handle. In trials, the system has delivered significant capacity increases. Copyright © Altran Praxis
- 27. What is iFACTS? • iFACTS provides tools to support the controllers – Electronic flight strips replace the paper flight strips. – Trajectory tools - including prediction, deviation alerts, and conflict detection – are added. • iFACTS is not an Air Traffic control system – Integrated with, but sits alongside, the existing system. Copyright © Altran Praxis
- 28. Medium Term Conflict Detection: Separation Monitor Separation Monitor Separation (NM) Cancel Alert Green Lines Labels 15 BAW225 UAL3 UAL2 10 SAA321 BAW028 ANZ001 AZA292 BAL547 DLH4695 AMM1077 5 SAS123 BAW43BE 0 0 5 10 15 Time to Interaction (mins) Copyright © Altran Praxis limited 2010
- 29. Agenda • A quick introduction – What is iFACTS? • Formal methods for Specification – Z, State machines. • Formal methods for Implementation – Implementation: SPARK. • Formal methods for Test – Verification: more Z, Mathematica. Copyright © Altran Praxis
- 30. The complete iFACTS specification • The functional specification – Z • The algorithm specification – Maths • The HMI specification – State tables • The rest of the specification! – English Copyright © Altran Praxis
- 32. Z training • Z reader training – 3 day course; fluency then comes after 1 week on the job. – We have trained 75 people to read Z. – Engineers, domain experts, ATCOs. • Z writer training – 3 day course, fluency then comes after 3 months on the job. – We have trained 11 people to write Z. – All engineers. Copyright © Altran Praxis
- 33. Z tools • Z written in Microsoft Word – To get acceptance, you need to work with what people know. – Supported by Word Add-ins. • A Z character set. • A simple interface to the fuzz type checker. • A graphical representation tool. Copyright © Altran Praxis
- 34. Z tools • Advantages – Easy to develop commentary and Z together. – Hyper linking of fuzz errors back to source. – Cross-referencing of Z names in final document. • Disadvantages – All the problems of large word documents. – Tools can be slow on 1000 page documents. – Merging branches is painful. • The Future – Open Office XML? Copyright © Altran Praxis
- 35. The state machine specification Button 1 Checkbox 1 State 1 State 2 N/A State 2 State 1 State 3 State 3 State 1 State 2 Transition Actions State 1 -> State 2 : De-select Checkbox 1 Copyright © Altran Praxis
- 36. State machine training & tools • Training – So trivial that we don’t train! – People “just get it”. • Tools – Err …. None. Copyright © Altran Praxis
- 37. Agenda • A quick introduction – What is iFACTS? • Formal methods for Specification – Z, State machines. • Formal methods for Implementation – Implementation: SPARK. • Formal methods for Test – Verification: more Z, Mathematica. Copyright © Altran Praxis
- 38. The SPARK Implementation • SPARK Ada – An annotated subset of Ada. • 150 KSLOC (Logical) • RTE (Run-Time Exception) Proof – Formal partial correctness proof against specification not considered cost-effective. Copyright © Altran Praxis
- 39. Code
- 40. SPARK Training • 57 people trained in SPARK – Mostly contractors and clients. – Diverse programming background. – All SPARK coders are also Z readers. • Effective as SPARK coders immediately • Picking up RTE proof takes longer. – About 2 months. • How long to pick up formal correctness proofs? – No data, but I suspect longer again. Copyright © Altran Praxis
- 41. SPARK Tools • The SPARK toolset – Examiner. – Proof Simplifier. – Proof Checker. • See me later! Copyright © Altran Praxis
- 42. Agenda • A quick introduction – What is iFACTS? • Formal methods for Specification – Z, State machines. • Formal methods for Implementation – Implementation: SPARK. • Formal methods for Test – Verification: more Z, Mathematica. Copyright © Altran Praxis
- 43. Test Design
- 44. The Challenge of Test Design How many potential tests for this fragment?
- 45. The Challenge of Test Design • If you just turn the handle there are 1134 conditions to test. • But if you work at it hard enough you can cover the required subset in just 6 test scripts. • Formal methods are not a substitute for initiative. Copyright © Altran Praxis
- 46. Test reference models • Algorithms are specified in pure mathematics. – Working out the expected answer for test cases is very difficult and error prone. • We generate test cases as usual. • We create a test reference implementation in Mathematica. • We do back-to-back testing of iFACTS against the reference. – Diverse tools and implementers reduce the possibility of a common failure. Copyright © Altran Praxis
- 47. Mathematica tools & training • Small team – only 5 trained. • Reference model has similar defect density to SPARK implementation. • Limited conclusions to draw from such a small activity. Copyright © Altran Praxis
- 48. Conclusions • Formal methods are applicable to all phases of the lifecycle. • Training engineers is not a barrier – It’s a one-off cost – Our data shows that training is easy and cheap. • Tool support is vital – The Achilles heel of formal methods •Except the SPARK Examiner! Copyright © Altran Praxis
- 49. Altran Praxis Altran Praxis Limited 20 Manvers Street Bath BA1 1PX United Kingdom Telephone: +44 (0) 1225 466991 Facsimile: +44 (0) 1225 469006 Website: www.altran-praxis.com Email: [email protected] Copyright © Altran Praxis
- 50. Tracing • Completeness of coverage – e.g., testing all parts of a Z specification • DOORS tool – Integrate Systems Engineering • Link all specification components with test case(s) or argument for safety case • Flag unlinked components • Also visualization of schema structure www.integrate.biz/casestudies/BusinessGoalAlignment.aspx
- 51. Future • Traffic Load Prediction Device (TLPD) • Forecast air traffic load up to 4 hours ahead • Plan workloads for optimum traffic flows www.altran-praxis.com/news/nats_control_system_21_Sep_10.aspxx
- 52. Reflection Oui, l'ouvre sort plus belle D'une forme au travail Rebelle, Vers, marbre, onyx, émail. [Yes, the work comes out more beautiful from a material that resists the process, verse, marble, onyx, or enamel.] — Théophile Gautier (1811–1872) L'Art
- 53. Beware Panaceas! Cf. Formal methods
- 55. The Industrial Use of Formal Methods: Experiences of an Optimist Prof. Jonathan P. Bowen London South Bank University University of Westminster Museophile Limited www.jpbowen.com [email protected]