Guest editorial to the special section on SEFM 2009

Abstract

Software engineering is about developing large systemsusing systematic techniques. Formal methods in software engineering advocates the use of precisely defined techniques to develop software. In theory, requirements can be captured as an abstract specification and the final system obtained via suitable transformations. In practice this is not really feasible. Hence, only a small part of the actual system development process uses formal methods. Thus, there are numerous open research problems in the area of formal methods as applied to software engineering. Formal methods in software engineering can be viewed as the use of techniques that are based on mathematics (i.e., the formal aspects) in the context of practical principles applied to building software (i.e., the engineering aspects). Topics that are of interest include the use of appropriate languages/notations for the specification of systems, the refinement of specifications to code, the semantic foundations that support formal methods, the rigorous analysis of specifications and/or code that can be undertaken. The aim of this special section is to provide a collection of papers that illustrate the application of formal methods to