Logics and techniques for automated reasoning have often been
developed with formal analysis and formal verification in mind.
To show applicability, toy examples or tiny case studies are
typically presented in research papers. Since the theory needs
to be developed first, this approach is reasonable.
However, to show that a developed approach actually scales to
real systems, large case studies are essential. The development
of formal models of real systems usually requires a perfect
understanding of informal descriptions of the system—sometimes
found in RFCs or other standard documents—which
are usually just written in English. Based on the type of system,
an adequate specification formalism needs to be chosen, and the
informal specification translated into it. Examples for such formalisms include process and program algebra,
Petri nets, variations of automata, as well as timed, stochastic and probabilistic extensions of these formalisms. Abstraction from
unimportant details then yields an accurate, formal model of
the real system.
The process of developing a detailed and accurate model usually
takes a large amount of time, often months or years; without even
starting a formal analysis. When publishing the results on a formal
analysis in a scientific paper, details of the model have to be
skipped due to lack of space, and often the lessons learnt from
modelling are not discussed since they are not the main focus of
the paper.
The workshop aims at discussing exactly these unmentioned lessons.
Examples are:
- Which formalism is chosen, and why?
- Which abstractions have to be made and why?
- How are important characteristics of the system modelled?
- Were there any complications while modelling the system?
- Which measures were taken to guarantee the accuracy of the model?
The workshop emphasises
modelling over verification.
In particular, we invite papers that present full
Models of Real Systems,
which may lay the basis for future formal analysis.
The workshop will bring together researchers from different communities that all aim
at verifying real systems and are developing formal models for such systems.
Areas where large models often occur are within networks, (trustworthy) systems
and software verification (from byte code up to programming- and specification languages).
An aim of the workshop is to present different modelling approaches and
discuss pros and cons for each of them.
Submissions must be unpublished and not be submitted for publication elsewhere.
Contributions are limited to
12 pages EPTCS style
(not counting the appendices), but shorter extended abstracts are welcome.
Appendices (of arbitrary length) can be used to present all details of
a formalised model; the appendices will be part of the proceedings.
In case a formal model is presented that is modelled in some formalism or tool,
such as timed automata for Uppaal or formal proofs for Isabelle/HOL,
these models have to be submitted as well. They will be published as part of
the proceedings, and will be made available in our
Repository of
Models for Formal Analysis of Real Systems.
Submissions must be in English and submitted in PDF format via
EasyChair.
All submissions will be peer reviewed by at least three referees based
on their novelty, relevance and technical merit. The proceedings will be published
as part of the open access series Electronic
Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science (EPTCS).
As mentioned above, we invite papers that present full Models of Real Systems, which may lay
the basis for future formal analysis. The full
Call for Papers can be found
here.