Rapid Application of Lightweight Formal Methods for Consistency Analysis

Lightweight formal methods promise to yield modest analysis results in an extremely rapid manner. To fulfill this promise, they must be able to work with existing information sources, be able to analyze for manifestly desirable properties, be highly automated (especially if dealing with voluminous amounts of information), and be readily customizable and flexible in the face of emerging needs and understanding. Two pilot studies investigate the feasibility of lightweight formal methods that employ a database as the underlying reasoning engine to perform the analyses. The first study concerns aspects of software module interfaces, the second test logs' adherence to required and expected conditions.