This self-contained tutorial on Z presents realistic case studies emphasizing safety-critical systems, with examples drawn from embedded controls, real-time and concurrent programming, computer graphics, games, text processing, databases, artificial intelligence, and object-oriented programming. It motivates the use of formal methods and discusses practical issues concerning how to apply them in real projects. It also teaches how to apply formal program derivation and verification to implement Z specifications in real programming languages with examples in C. The book includes exercises with solutions, reference materials, and a guide to further reading.

This book teaches model-based analysis and model-based testing, with important new ways to write and analyze software specifications and designs, generate test cases, and check the results of test runs. These methods increase the automation in each of these steps, making them more timely, more thorough, and more effective. Using a familiar programming language, testers and analysts will learn to write models that describe how a program is supposed to behave. The authors work through several realistic case studies in depth and detail, using a toolkit built on the C# language and the .NET framework. Readers can also apply the methods in analyzing and testing systems in many other languages and frameworks. Intended for professional software developers including testers, and for university students, this book is suitable for courses on software engineering, testing, specification, or applications of formal methods.