"This volume contains the proceedings of the fourth International Joint Conference on the Theory and Practice of Software Development, TAPSOFT '93. Since the first in 1985, the aim of these conferences has been to bring together theoretical computer scientists and researchers in software engineering with a view to discussing how formal methods can usefully be applied in software development. TAPSOFT '93 consists ofthree parts: an advanced seminar, the Colloquium on Trees in Algebra and Programming (CAAP), and the Colloquium on Formal Approaches of Software Engineering (FASE). The advanced seminar includes four invited surveys and four invited conferences. The selected papers for CAAP are organized in seven sessions: specifications and proofs, concurrency, automata and counting, constraints solving, rewriting, logic and trees, analysis of algorithms, and a common session with FASE on type inference. The selected papers for FASE are presented in eight sessions: case studies in formal design and development, compositionality modules and development, formal development, foundations and analysis of formal specifications, verification of concurrent systems, model checking, parallel calculus, and a common session with CAAP on type inference."--PUBLISHER'S WEBSITE.

This volume presents the proceedings of the Sixth International Joint Conference on the Theory and Practice of Software Engineering, TAPSOFT '95, held in Aarhus, Denmark in May 1995. TAPSOFT '95 celebrates the 10th anniversary of this conference series started in Berlin in 1985 to bring together theoretical computer scientists and software engineers (researchers and practitioners) with a view to discussing how formal methods can usefully be applied in software development. The volume contains seven invited papers, among them one by Vaugham Pratt on the recently revealed bug in the Pentium chip, and 44 revised full papers selected from a total of 147 submissions. In addition the TAPSOFT '95 proceedings contains 10 tool descriptions.

Symposium on Algorithms (ESA '93), held in Bad Honnef, near Boon, in Germany, September 30 - October 2, 1993. The symposium is intended to launchan annual series of international conferences, held in early fall, covering the field of algorithms. Within the scope of the symposium lies all research on algorithms, theoretical as well as applied, that is carried out in the fields of computer science and discrete applied mathematics. The symposium aims to cater to both of these research communities and to intensify the exchange between them. The volume contains 35 contributed papers selected from 101 proposals submitted in response to the call for papers, as well as three invited lectures: "Evolution of an algorithm" by Michael Paterson, "Complexity of disjoint paths problems in planar graphs" by Alexander Schrijver, and "Sequence comparison and statistical significance in molecular biology" by Michael S. Waterman.

The last few years have borne witness to a remarkable diversity of formal methods, with applications to sequential and concurrent software, to real-time and reactive systems, and to hardware design. In that time, many theoretical problems have been tackled and solved, and many continue to be worked upon. Yet it is by the suitability of their industrial application and the extent of their usage that formal methods will ultimately be judged. This volume presents the proceedings of the first international symposium of Formal Methods Europe, FME'93. The symposium focuses on the application of industrial-strength formal methods. Authors address the difficulties of scaling their techniques up to industrial-sized problems, and their suitability in the workplace, and discuss techniques that are formal (that is, they have a mathematical basis) and that are industrially applicable. The volume has four parts: - Invited lectures, containing a lecture by Cliff B. Jones and a lecture by Antonio Cau and Willem-Paul de Roever; - Industrial usage reports, containing 6 reports; - Papers, containing 32 selected and refereedpapers; - Tool descriptions, containing 11 descriptions.

This book originates from the International Symposium on Compositionality, COMPOS'97, held in Bad Malente, Germany in September 1997. The 25 chapters presented in revised full version reflect the current state of the art in the area of compositional reasoning about concurrency. The book is a valuable reference for researchers and professionals interested in formal systems design and analysis; it also is well suited for self study and use in advanced courses.

Markov Chains are widely used as stochastic models to study a broad spectrum of system performance and dependability characteristics. This monograph is devoted to compositional specification and analysis of Markov chains. Based on principles known from process algebra, the author systematically develops an algebra of interactive Markov chains. By presenting a number of distinguishing results, of both theoretical and practical nature, the author substantiates the claim that interactive Markov chains are more than just another formalism: Among other, an algebraic theory of interactive Markov chains is developed, devise algorithms to mechanize compositional aggregation are presented, and state spaces of several million states resulting from the study of an ordinary telefone system are analyzed.

Concurrency and distribution have become the dominant paradigm and concern in computer science. Despite the fact that much of the early research in object-oriented programming focused on sequential systems, objects are a natural unit of distribution and concurrency - as elucidated early on by research on the Actor model. Thus, models and theories of concurrency, the oldest one being Petri nets, and their relation to objects are an attractive topic of study. This book presents state-of-the-art results on Petri nets and concurrent object-oriented programming in a coherent and competent way. The 24 thoroughly reviewed and revised papers are organized in three sections. The first consists of long papers, each presenting a detailed approach to integrating Petri nets and object-orientation. Section II includes shorter papers with emphasis on concrete examples to demonstrate the approach. Finally, section III is devoted to papers which significantly build on the Actor model of computation.