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Declarative specifications have a vital role to play in developing safe and dependable software systems. Writing specifications correctly, however, remains particularly challenging. This paper presents a controlled experiment on using large…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-07-22 Yang Hong , Shan Jiang , Yulei Fu , Sarfraz Khurshid

Earth System Models (ESMs) are critical for understanding past climates and projecting future scenarios. However, the complexity of these models, which include large code bases, a wide community of developers, and diverse computational…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2025-10-16 Alper Altuntas , Allison H. Baker , John Baugh , Ganesh Gopalakrishnan , Stephen F. Siegel

We review state-of-the-art formal methods applied to the emerging field of the verification of machine learning systems. Formal methods can provide rigorous correctness guarantees on hardware and software systems. Thanks to the availability…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2021-04-22 Caterina Urban , Antoine Miné

In the past few years LLMs have emerged as a tool that can aid programmers by taking natural language descriptions and generating code based on it. However, the reliability of LLM code generation and current validation techniques for it are…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2025-11-24 Aaron Councilman , David Jiahao Fu , Aryan Gupta , Chengxiao Wang , David Grove , Yu-Xiong Wang , Vikram Adve

The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a widely used general purpose modeling language. Together with the Object Constraint Language (OCL), formal models can be described by defining the structure and behavior with UML and additional OCL…

Human-Computer Interaction · Computer Science 2017-01-31 Frank Hilken , Martin Gogolla

A domain specific language (DSL) abstracts from implementation details and is aligned with the way domain experts reason about a software component. The development of DSLs is usually centered around a grammar and transformations that…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2015-11-26 Sarmen Keshishzadeh , Arjan J. Mooij , Jozef Hooman

When developing a safety-critical system it is essential to obtain an assessment of different design alternatives. In particular, an early safety assessment of the architectural design of a system is desirable. In spite of the plethora of…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2011-07-07 Florian Leitner-Fischer , Stefan Leue

Requirements expressed in natural language are an indispensable artifact in the software development process, as all stakeholders can understand them. However, their ambiguity poses a persistent challenge. To address this issue,…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-04-16 Mauro José Pacchiotti , Mariel Ale y Luciana Ballejos

Despite its many unquestionable benefits, formal specifications are not widely used in industrial software development. In order to reduce the time and effort required to write formal specifications, in this paper we propose a technique for…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2015-12-23 María Alpuente , Daniel Pardo , Alicia Villanueva

Early stages of system development involve outlining desired features such as functionality, availability, or usability. Specifications are derived from these features that concretize vague ideas presented in natural languages. The…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2014-10-09 Rongjie Yan , Chih-Hong Cheng , Guangquan Zhang , Yesheng Chai

Reliable verification of proofs remains a bottleneck for training and evaluating AI systems on hard mathematical reasoning. Fully formal proofs, in languages like Lean, are easy to verify because they are unambiguous and modular. Most…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2026-05-21 Slim Barkallah , Luke Bailey , Kaiyue Wen , Mohammed Abouzaid , Tengyu Ma

Safety- and security-critical systems have to be thoroughly tested against their specifications. The state of practice is to have _natural language_ specifications, from which test cases are derived manually - a process that is slow,…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-11-25 Kuangxiangzi Liu , Dhiman Chakraborty , Alexander Liggesmeyer , Andreas Zeller

Formal Verification (FV) relies on high-quality SystemVerilog Assertions (SVAs), but the manual writing process is slow and error-prone. Existing LLM-based approaches either generate assertions from scratch or ignore structural patterns in…

Hardware Architecture · Computer Science 2026-03-20 Saeid Rajabi , Chengmo Yang , Satwik Patnaik

Fully automated verification of large-scale software and hardware systems is arguably the holy grail of formal methods. Large language models (LLMs) have recently demonstrated their potential for enhancing the degree of automation in formal…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-03-11 Zhongyi Wang , Tengjie Lin , Mingshuai Chen , Haokun Li , Mingqi Yang , Xiao Yi , Shengchao Qin , Yixing Luo , Xiaofeng Li , Bin Gu , Liqiang Lu , Jianwei Yin

Software testing and verification are critical for ensuring the reliability and security of modern software systems. Traditionally, formal verification techniques, such as model checking and theorem proving, have provided rigorous…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-03-17 Norbert Tihanyi , Tamas Bisztray , Mohamed Amine Ferrag , Bilel Cherif , Richard A. Dubniczky , Ridhi Jain , Lucas C. Cordeiro

Ensuring that API implementations and usage comply with natural language programming rules is critical for software correctness, security, and reliability. Formal verification can provide strong guarantees but requires precise…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2026-02-06 Shihao Xia , Mengting He , Haomin Jia , Linhai Song

There are some non-formal methodologies such as RUP, OpenUP, agile methodologies such as SCRUP, XP and techniques like those proposed by UML, which allow the development of software. The software industry has struggled to generate quality…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2011-11-07 Carlos Alberto Fernandez-y-Fernandez , Martín José José

Formal specifications play a pivotal role in accurately characterizing program behaviors and ensuring software correctness. In recent years, leveraging large language models (LLMs) for the automatic generation of program specifications has…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-02-03 Zehan Chen , Long Zhang , Zhiwei Zhang , JingJing Zhang , Ruoyu Zhou , Yulong Shen , JianFeng Ma , Lin Yang

Formal languages let us define the textual representation of data with precision. Formal grammars, typically in the form of BNF-like productions, describe the language syntax, which is then annotated for syntax-directed translation and…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2015-03-19 Luis Quesada , Fernando Berzal , Juan-Carlos Cubero

High-level synthesis (HLS) transforms an algorithmic description of hardware from a higher abstraction (e.g., C/C++) into a register-transfer level (RTL) design, offering reduced development time and greater flexibility in design space…

Hardware Architecture · Computer Science 2026-04-27 Xiaofeng Zhou , Linfeng Du , Guangyu Hu , Sharad Sinha , Hongce Zhang , Wei Zhang