This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Abstract State Machines, Alloy, B, TLA, VDM, and Z, ABZ 2016, held in Southampton, UK, in June 2018. The 20 full and 11 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 60 submissions. They record the latest research developments in state-based formal methods Abstract State Machines, Alloy, B, Circus, Event-B, TLS+, VDM and Z.

This Festschrift was published in honor of Egon Boerger on the occasion of his 75th birthday. It acknowledges Prof. Boerger's inspiration as a scientist, author, mentor, and community organizer. Dedicated to a pioneer in the fields of logic and computer science, Egon Boerger's research interests are unusual in scope, from programming languages to hardware architectures, software architectures, control systems, workflow and interaction patterns, business processes, web applications, and concurrent systems. The 18 invited contributions in this volume are by leading researchers in the areas of software engineering, programming languages, business information systems, and computer science logic.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Rigorous State-Based Methods, ABZ 2021, which was planned to take place in Ulm, Germany, during June 6-11, 2021. The conference changed to an online format due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 6 full and 8 short papers included in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 18 submissions. The proceedings also include 3 PhD symposium contributions. They deal with state-based and machine-based formal methods, mainly Abstract State Machines (ASM), Alloy, B, TLA+, VDM, and Z.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Rigorous State-Based Methods, ABZ 2020, which was due to be held in Ulm, Germany, in May 2020. The conference was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 12 full papers and 9 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 61 submissions. They are presented in this volume together with 2 invited papers, 6 PhD-Symposium-contributions, as well as the case study and 6 accepted papers outlining solutions to it. The papers are organized in the following sections: keynotes and invited papers; regular research articles; short articles; articles contributing to the case study; short articles of the PhD-symposium (work in progress).

This book uses a variety of applications to illustrate a modeling method that helps practitioners to manage complex software-intensive systems. The proposed method relies on the combination of its abstraction concept and its operational character, with behavioral models in the precise and simple form of Abstract State Machines (ASMs). The book introduces both the modeling method (Part I) and the available tool support (Part II): In Part I the authors detail (using numerous examples) how to construct, explain, debug, explore, extend and reuse accurate system design models, starting from scratch. Only an elementary knowledge of common mathematical (including set-theoretic) notation and some basic experience with computational processes (systems, programs, algorithms) is assumed. Part II then shows how the modeling method can be supported by implementing tools that make design models executable and debuggable. To illustrate how to build, debug and maintain systems and to explain their construction in a checkable manner, a general, problem-oriented refinement method is adopted to construct system models from components. The method starts with abstract models and refines them step by step, incrementally adding further details that eventually lead to code. Intended for practitioners who build software intensive systems, and students specializing in software engineering, it can be used both for self-study and for teaching, and it can serve as a reference book. Exercises are included to help readers check their understanding of the explained concepts. For many models defined in the book, refinements to executable versions can be downloaded for experimental validation from the book's website at http://modelingbook.informatik.uni-ulm.de