Aims of the Project

The primary aims of the project, which arose out of Prof. Keedy's previous experiences working with ICL, especially in the design team for the ICL 2900 Series VME Operating System, were as follows:

To develop practical software engineering techniques for improving the specification, design, implementation and maintenance of large software systems, i.e. systems involving tens, hundreds and even thousands of man years of effort.

To develop practical techniques for guaranteeing the security (i.e. the confidentiality, integrity and availability) of information held in large computer systems.

Some aspects of these aims are best achieved at the level of programming language design and have been pursued in related projects, notably in the Leibniz Project, in the L1 Project and most recently in the Timor Project (see www.timor-programming.org).

Other aspects of the aims are more appropriately achieved by a combination of hardware and operating system software. These are the issues which have been addressed in the Monads Project and most recently also in the Speedos Project and the S-RISC Project (see www.speedos-security.org).