Introduction to the Special Collection from FACS 2022

This special collection of the International Journal on Formal Aspects of Computing (FAC) contains a selection of the best papers accepted at the 18th International Conference on Formal Aspects of Component Software (FACS 2022). This conference was held online on November 10–11, 2022.

The aim of the conference series is to study how formal methods can be applied to component-based software and system development. Component-based software development proposes sound engineering principles and techniques to cope with the complexity of modern software systems. Many challenging conceptual and technological issues remain in component-based software development theory and practice. Furthermore, the advent of service-oriented and cloud computing, cyber-physical systems, and the Internet of Things comes with new challenges, such as quality of service and robustness to withstand faults, which require revisiting established concepts and developing new ones. Formal methods have provided foundations for component-based software through research on mathematical models for components, composition and adaptation, and rigorous approaches to verification, deployment, testing, and certification.

After the FACS 2022 conference, five best papers were selected and the authors of these papers were invited to submit a revised and extended version of their work to this special collection. After a meticulous review process, we finally accepted three of the five invited papers. These papers cover a combination of analysis for object-oriented systems, probabilistic transition systems, and co-simulation of real systems, including

We are grateful to Formal Aspects of Computing and the ACM Digital Library for allowing us to publish this special collection of articles, particularly Jim Woodcock and John Cooke for their editorial support. We are also grateful to all program committee members of FACS 2022 and the reviewers involved in reviewing the papers included in this special collection. Their thorough reviews and guidance have helped improve the quality of the papers published here. Most importantly, we thank the authors of the contributed papers.