Verification of Concurrent and Distributed Software

Description and Aim

The workshop is planned as a follow-up of the May 2014 meeting “Reliability of Concurrent and Distributed Software”. That meeting focused on finding ways of overcoming the existing fragmentation in the development and application of techniques and tools in the field. In particular, during the meeting, various solutions to shared challenge problems were discussed and compared. This led to many new insights and collaborations between researchers working in the field of reliability of concurrent and distributed programs.

However, an important next step for this research field is to bridge the gap with industrial practice. The current formal analysis techniques are still not easily applicable in an industrial setting. Therefore, the focus of this workshop is centered around this aim, focusing on the technology transfer from academia to industry, and bringing academic tools to industrial usability standards. Concretely, during the workshop, we will develop a roadmap of actions that is necessary to achieve the technology transfer from academia to industry.

During the previous workshop, we already had some discussions on this theme. In particular, we discussed the formal analysis standards currently used in industry. This made us realise that the daily industrial practice is still far away from what academia actually has to offer, but also that the academic tools are still not mature enough to be used in an industrial setting.

Verification Technology     

A main objective of the proposed workshop is to inform all industrial representatives about the state-of-the-art in the area, and discuss cutting edge techniques and the potential for their industrial uptake on the basis of well-chosen case studies.

We will consider static as well as dynamic analysis techniques, and discuss what combination of these has the most potential for industrial uptake. In addition to the topics and techniques that were discussed in the previous workshop, we will consider Real-Time Java and Runtime Verification.

Technology Transfer          

The focus of this workshop will be on the industrial applicability of the existing state-of-the-art verification technology. In particular, we will discuss: current industrial practices, maturity of the techniques, user interfaces and tool feedback, learning curves, tool integration, and the incorporation of verification tools into the software development and quality assurance process.

Target Applications

Specific applications that will be considered include Multicore, Cloud and Micro-cloud, Internet of things, Smart cities, as well as Real-time and Safety-critical Systems.

Future Collaborations

A further aspect of the workshop will be the planning for applications for future collaborative projects and educational programs such as joint undergraduate and graduate programs.

Industry Day

The fourth day of workshop is planned as an industry day, involving ca. 15 extra indusrial representatives especially invited for the day. This will allow representatives from companies that are active players in the software field, who cannot afford to stay for the full duration of the workshop, to still benefit from and contribute to the ideas developed during the workshop. The focus of the day will be on presenting of a summary of the conclusions from the group discussions of the preceding days, and on follow-up discussions in the enlarged group. The day will end with a dinner in Leiden, for the enlarged group.