The Rodin tool is a software tool for formal modelling in Event-B. It was developed as part of several collaborative European Union projects, including initially the RODIN project (2004–2007).

Overview
Event-B is a notation and method developed from the B-Method and is intended to be used with an incremental style of modelling. The idea of incremental modelling has been taken from programming: modern programming languages come with integrated development environment that make it easy to modify and improve programs. The Rodin tool provides such an environment for Event-B. Two characteristics of the Rodin tool are its ease of use and its extensibility.

The tool focuses on modelling. It allows the user to modify models and try out variations of a model. The tool is also extensible. This makes it possible to adapt the tool to specific needs, so the tool can be adapted to fit into existing development processes instead of demanding the opposite. There is an associated Event-B wiki.

Rodin ("Rigorous Open Development Environment for Complex Systems") is an extension of Eclipse IDE (Java-based). The Rodin Eclipse Builder manages the following:

Well-formedness and type checker
Proof obligation (PO) generator
Proof manager (PM)
Propagation of changes

Rodin Proof Manager (PM)
PM constructs a proof tree for each PO
Automatic and interactive modes
PM manages used hypotheses
PM calls reasoners to:
discharge goal, or
split goal into subgoals
Collection of reasoners:
simplifier, rule‐based, decision procedures,
Basic tactics language to define PM and reasoners

Industrial applications and case studies
The Rodin project included five industrial case studies that served to validate the toolset and helped with the elaboration of an appropriate methodology for using the tools. The case studies were led by industrial partners of the Rodin project, supported by the other partners. The case studies were as follows:

 A failure management system for an engine controller;
 Part of a platform for mobile Internet technology;
 Engineering of communications protocols;
 An air-traffic display system;
 An ambient campus application.

Some available plug-ins for Rodin
B4free provers
Provider: ClearSy
Function: Theorem provers
UML-B
Provider: University of Southampton
Function: UML-like graphical front-end for Event-B supporting class diagrams and state charts
ProB
Provider: University of Düsseldorf
Function: Animation and Model-checking of Event-B models; Counterexamples for false proof goals, in particular, proof obligations
Brama
Provider: ClearSy
Function: Animation of B models. The purpose is twofold:
Experimentation with a model to observe states and transitions
Flash animation of Event-B models
Modularisation
Provider: Newcastle University
Function: Structuring Event-B developments into logical units of modelling, called modules; Model composition; Model reuse

References

Further reading
Jean-Raymond Abrial. The B-Book: Assigning Programs to Meanings. Cambridge University Press, 1996, ().
Jean-Raymond Abrial, Michael Butler, Stefan Hallerstede, and Laurent Voisin. An open extensible tool environment for Event-B. In Z. Liu and J. He, editors, ICFEM 2006, LNCS, volume 4260, pages 588–605. Springer, 2006.
Abdolbaghi Rezazadeh, Neil Evans, and Michael Butler. Redevelopment of an Industrial, Case Study Using Event-B and Rodin. In BCS-FACS Christmas 2007 Meeting, 2007.
RODIN. Deliverable D18: Intermediate report on case study developments.
Michael Butler and Stefan Hallerstede, The Rodin Formal Modelling Tool, EU Research Project IST 511599 RODIN.
Eclipse platform homepage.

External links
 Event-B and the Rodin Platform
 Event-B and Rodin Documentation Wiki
 Rodin on SourceForge

2007 software
Formal methods tools
Formal specification languages