31 October 2005,
an EPSRC RefineNet workshop will be held as part of
ICFEM 2005: the seventh International Conference on Formal Engineering
Methods
University of Manchester, UK
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/icfem05/
Refinement is one of the cornerstones of a formal approach to software engineering: the process of developing a more detailed design or implementation from an abstract specification through a sequence of mathematically-based steps that maintain correctness with respect to the original specification. This meeting is organised by the EPSRC supported RefineNet network which brings together people from both academia and industry who are interested in refinement, and the tools supporting formal software development.
The purpose of this one-day workshop is to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas, and provide an opportunity to discuss practical experiences using the diverse range formal refinement methodologies as well as their theoretical foundations. The emphasis will be on informal discussions centred around presentations, with the day beginning with an invited speaker (tbc). Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):
We invite papers and talks on the above topics. Submissions will be reviewed for relevance to the workshop and participants -- proceedings will be distributed at the meeting. This meeting forms part of the regular meetings run by the RefineNet network, and is open to all with an interest in refinement.
The Refinement workshop will take place on October 31st 2005, as one of the ICFEM workshops at the University of Manchester, UK.
Papers or presentations should be submitted by e-mail to reach Neil Evans by October 7th, 2005. It is anticipated that talks will be of 30-45mins duration.
This workshop continues a long tradition in refinement workshops run under the auspices of the British Computer Society (BCS) FACS special interest group. Running since 1988, previous refinement workshops have been held at Cambridge, London, Bath etc.
In 1998 the BCS refinement workshop was combined with the Australasian Refinement Workshop to form the International Refinement Workshop, hosted at alongside Formal Methods Pacific 1998 at The Australian National University. In 2002, the Refinement Workshop was held as an FME workshop in Copenhagen. Proceedings appeared in ENTCS Vol.70(3), and a special issue of the Formal Aspects of Computing journal based on the workshop appeared in 2003 (Vol. 15:1-2). This year the Refinement Workshop was co-located with the ZB conference at Guildford, Surrey. ENTCS proceedings have appeared, and a special issue of the Formal Aspects of Computing journal based on the workshop is under preparation.
The Workshop Webpages are available at http://www.refinenet.org.uk/