Formal add to traditional methods in software engineering

Abstract

Traditional, informal techniques in software engineering reach their limits when complex systems are to be developed efficiently. The Institute for Formal Methods in Computer Science of the Universitat Stuttgart states: Tools like IDEs, automatic code generation from graphical descriptions, visualization techniques like UML diagrams, and others are certainly necessary. However, they often lack the ability to support detailed and provably sound reasoning about complex systems. Formal methods in software engineering provide approaches to close that gap.