ECOOP 2005 Tutorial
"Design by Contract and Automatic Verification for Java with JML and ESC/Java2"

An ECOOP 2005 Tutorial

Monday, 25 July, 2005

Organizers: Joe Kiniry, Erik Poll, and David Cok

Abstract

This tutorial introduces ESC/Java2 and the JML annotation language.

The Java Modeling Language (JML) is a behavioral interface specification language that can be used to specify the behavior of Java modules. It combines the Design by Contract approach of Eiffel and the model-based specification approach of the Larch family of interface specification languages, with some elements of the refinement calculus. JML has a Java-based syntax and semantics, thus is easy to learn for Java programmers.

ESC/Java2 is a tool that checks that a program is consistent with its annotation. It also detects, at compile time, common programming errors that ordinarily are not detected until run time, and sometimes not even then; for example, null dereference errors, array bounds errors, type cast errors, and race conditions. While ESC/Java uses a theorem prover, it feels to a programmer more like a powerful type checker.

Because JML is familiar to Java programmers, and ESC/Java2 just feels like a typechecker, we believe that they are an excellent way to gently introduce programmers to formal methods.

Attendee Background

Any Java programmer who wishes to improve the quality of their software should attend. Also, educators who want to use JML and ESC/Java2 in teaching, as a gentle way to introduce students to state-of-the-art specification and verification techniques and tools supporting formal methods, should also attend this tutorial.

Objectives

Attendees will come out of this tutorial with a firm understanding of the use of specifications in software design and engineering, a basic knowledge of the JML specification language, and will be knowledgeable about the various tools available for the JML language, particularly ESC/Java2.

Duration

This tutorial will be an all-day tutorial, as this will give instructors time to demonstrate the tools, interact with attendees, show various user-interfaces and options, etc.

Tutorial History

This tutorial was one of the most successful tutorials at ECOOP 2004 and ETAPS 2005, thus all course material is available immediately. In particular, extensive slides, homework assignments, and an ongoing book on JML and ESC/Java2 are available. This tutorial is also being given at FM 2005 and classes have been given by two of the presenters at AIST and Eindhoven University of Technology.

Organizer Biographies

All presenters are experts on extended static checking, program verification, JML, Java, and related topics.

  • Joseph Kiniry, University College Dublin
    Joe is a Lecturer in the School of Computer Science and Informatics at University College Dublin. Previously he was a Postdoc in the SoS Group at the Radboud University Nijmegen. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the California Institute of Technology. Joe is the coauthor of ESC/Java2.
  • Erik Poll, Radboud University Nijmegen
    Erik is a Lecturer in the SoS Group at the Radboud University Nijmegen. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Eindhoven.
  • David Cok, Eastman Kodak Company
    David is Chief Technologist for the Photographic Center within Kodak's R&D Laboratories in Rochester, New York. He earned his Ph.D. in Physics at Harvard University. He has participated in and led software development projects for research and commercialization. David is the co-author of ESC/Java2.

Resources

The following resources are available for all interested in JML and ESC/Java, whether you decide to attend our tutorial or not. We will include tutorial material on this web page at a later date.