A LOTOS Based Tutorial on Formal Methods for Object Oriented Distributed Systems

The majority of formal methods for distributed systems have their origins in the 1980's and were targeted at the early generations of distributed systems. However, modern distributed systems have new features not found in the early systems, e.g. they are object-oriented, have mobile components, are time sensitive and are constructed according to advanced system development architectures, e.g. viewpoints models. A major topic of current research is thus, how to enhance the existing formal techniques in order to support these new features. This paper gives a tutorial level review of this research area. We particularly focus on the process algebra LOTOS and consider how the technique can be reconciled with these new features.