40 years FORM: Some new aspects?

40 years ago Hasofer and Lind wrote their seminal paper [13] about FORM where they described an algorithm for finding the beta point. This algorithm, later in 1978 generalized by Rackwitz and Fiessler in [23] to include nonnormal random variables, is known as Hasofer-Lind-Rackwitz-Fiessler (HL-RF) algorithm and till now it is an important tool for reliability calculations. Here its relation with standard numerical optimization is explained. Further a simple method for computing the SORM factor is given and the connection of FORM/SORM with dimension reduction concepts is outlined.