An empirical study on the correctness of formally verified distributed systems
One has to be careful and read the paper and understand the systems brought under review.<p>The fine article states, <i>&quot;Does all that hard work on formal verification verify that they actually work in practice? No.&quot;</i><p>The systems under investigation (Ironfleet[0], Chapar[1], and Verdi[2]) are not general-purpose &quot;formal verification&quot; languages and tools. They allow you to develop a high-level specification in a formal logic and extract an implementation from it.<p>The conclusion is odd. The systems produce implementations that are free of errors (so long as the specification itself is correct). The study finds that the majority of errors happen at the interface between the verified and unverified components of the system. This is reason why &quot;formal verification&quot; doesn&#x27;t actually work in practice.<p>The article mentions The Amazon Paper[3]. It&#x27;s a fine retrospective of Amazon&#x27;s use of TLA+ and formal methods to find errors, produce correct designs, and test ideas. Yet the paper isn&#x27;t about TLA+ or formal methods in general.<p>If you&#x27;re interested in the analysis I&#x27;d read the paper first before this summary and draw your own conclusions.<p><i>Update</i> links:<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.microsoft.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;research&#x2F;publication&#x2F;ironfleet-proving-practical-distributed-systems-correct&#x2F;#" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.microsoft.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;research&#x2F;publication&#x2F;ironfle...</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dl.acm.org&#x2F;citation.cfm?id=2837622" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dl.acm.org&#x2F;citation.cfm?id=2837622</a><p>[2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;verdi.uwplse.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;verdi.uwplse.org&#x2F;</a><p>[3] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;research.microsoft.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;um&#x2F;people&#x2F;lamport&#x2F;tla&#x2F;formal-methods-amazon.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;research.microsoft.com&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;um&#x2F;people&#x2F;lamport&#x2F;tla&#x2F;fo...</a>