FormalWARE is a project to investigate how formal methods can be used in the development
of critical, software-intensive, projects.
The Canadian Automated Air Traffic System (CAATS) development project at Raytheon
Systems (formerly Hughes Aircraft) inspired some of the directions which FormalWARE
pursued. The formal methods, based on rigorous mathematical models and
specification techniques, were applied to the analysis, verification and testing of software.
The review panel is very positive about the results achieved by the FormalWARE
project. It recognizes how difficult it can be to persuade a large company like Raytheon or
MacDonald Dettwiler (MDA) to even think about a more formal approach to software development.
In this light, the project has achieved significant results by fostering continued
interaction between industry and two universities over a two year period.
The project has placed graduate students inside the companies for lengthy periods;
there has been a series of presentations and/or regular visits by university researchers to the
companies; the project has developed software tools applicable to real problems faced by
the companies; the project has used problems taken from the industrial setting as the basis
for academic research.
All these interactions represent money well spent by the BC Advanced Systems Institute
and the industry partners. We view the project as a success, particularly when the relatively
modest funding level is taken into account.
Although the funded part of the project has now come to a conclusion, we expect the
momentum generated by the project to lead to more collaborations in the future. We strongly
urge Raytheon and MDA to continue to work with these researchers and other researchers
in a mutually beneficial partnership, whether or not additional funds from government
agencies can be obtained.
We fully expect some of the methods and software tools to be commercially useful. We
recommend that opportunities for exploiting the technology be pursued both through the
University-Industry Liaison Office and by more direct means.
