VDM '91

This two-volume set gathers the papers from the fourth Vienna Development Method Symposium, held in 1991. The earlier gatherings took place in 1987 (LNCS 252), 1988 (LNCS 328) and 1990 (LNCS 428). VDM Europe, an advisory board set up in 1985 with sponsorship from the Commission of the European Communities, has organised these symposia. Its working group brought together researchers, software engineers and programmers who wanted formal methods to be used more widely in industrial software development. Although the event centred on VDM, it also presented many other approaches to formal software development.

The first volume holds the conference material in four sections: talks by invited speakers, research papers, project reports and abstracts of tool demonstrations. Its focus is on methods and calculi for development and verification, on tools that support verification, on practical experience gained from real development projects, and on the theory behind these questions.

The second volume offers eight tutorials. Four are introductions to LARCH, the refinement calculus, VDM and RAISE. The other four are advanced courses on ABEL, PROSPECTRA, the B Method and the Stack. Together they give a broad overview of the field as it stood at the time.