Practical Formal Verification of Domain-Specific Language Applications

An application developer’s primary task is to produce performant systems that meet their specifications. Formal methods techniques allow engineers to create models and implementations that have a high assurance of satisfying a specification. In this experience report, we take a model-based approach to software development that adds the assurance of formal methods to software construction while automating over 90% of the formal modeling. We discuss a software development methodology and two specific examples that illustrate how to integrate formal methods and their benefits into a traditional (testing-based) software development process.