The B method is quite popular for developing provably correct software for safety critical railway systems, particularly for driverless trains. In recent years, the B method has also been used successfully for data validation (http://www.data-validation.fr). There, the B language has proven to be a compact way to express complex validation rules, and tools such as predicateB, Ovado or ProB can be used to provide high assurance validation engines, where a secondary toolchain validates the result of the primary toolchain.

This talk will give an overview of our experience in using logic-based formal methods in general and B in particular for industrial applications. We will also touch subjects such as training and readability and the implementation of ProB in Prolog. We will examine which features of B make it well suited for, e.g., the railway domain, but also point out some weaknesses and suggestions for future developments. We will also touch upon other formal methods such as Alloy or TLA+, as well as other constraint solving backends for B, not based on Prolog (SAT via Kodkod/Alloy and SMT via Z3 and CVC4).