The power and potential of Hydro4GE come from a well-defined focus – constructing solutions to business problems using a database foundation with web-based delivery.
Why does Hydro4GE work? Let’s go back to the early days of computing. What approach to software development first made computing viable to business? Simply stated, it was the development of programming languages such as COBOL, FORTRAN, etc. in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. That is, once software developers got the correct specifications, they could translate those specifications in a reasonable amount of time into software.
What if we could apply programming-like precision to the transition between business requirements and software specifications? The greatest success to this approach is based on a project out of Oxford University that resulted in the software specification language called Z, pronounced “zed†(1993). There are a few firms, mostly European, that use the Z approach. While Z results can be spectacular, they can also be prohibitively expensive (due primarily to the fact that there are very few software developers that have the required formal mathematical skills to use Z). In a paper (Bowen and Hinchey, 1995), two of the original members of the Z team presented suggestions about making compromises that would allow firms to employ the best ideas in Z without the expensive formalism that goes along with it.
Hydro4GE is an example of an approach to the construction of software systems that follows the Ten Commandments in the Bowen-Hinchey article.
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS OF FORMAL METHODS
I. Thou Shalt Choose An Appropriate Notation.
II. Thou Shalt Formalize But Not Overformalize
III. Thou Shalt Estimate Costs.
IV. Thou Shalt Have A Formal Methods Guru On Call.
V. Thou Shalt Not Abandon Thy Traditional Development Methods.
VI. Thou Shalt Document Sufficiently.
VII. Thou Shalt Not Compromise Thy Quality Standards.
VIII. Thou Shalt Not Be Dogmatic.
IX. Thou Shalt Test, Test, And Test Again.
X. Thou Shalt Reuse.Bowen, Jonathan P., and Michael G. Hinchey. “Ten Commandments Of Formal Methodsâ€. IEEE Computer, v.28,n.4. April 1995.
Bowen, Jonathan P., and Michael G. Hinchey. “Ten commandments revisited: a ten-year perspective on the industrial application of formal methodsâ€. Proceedings of the 10th international workshop on Formal methods for industrial critical systems. Lisbon, Portugal. 2005
