LOTOS (Language Of Temporal Ordering Specification) became an international standard in 1989, although application of preliminary versions of the language to communication services and protocols of the ISO/OSI family dates back to 1984. This history of the use of LOTOS made it apparent that more advantages than the pure production of standard reference documents were to be expected from the use of such formal description techniques. "LOTOSphere: Software Development with LOTOS" describes a five-year project that moved LOTOS out of the ISO tower into software engineering practice. LOTOS became a vehicle for efficient, yet formally based, industrial software specification, design, verification, implementation and testing. The text is divided into six parts. The first introduces the reader to LOTOS and the project LOTOSphere. The five remaining each treat an important part of the software development life cycle using LOTOS. This book gives a comprehensive treatment of the use of these formal description techniques in a software engineering environment.
It will thus be a valuable reference for researchers and software developers and can also be used as a text for an advanced course on the subject.