Efficient Large-scale Trace Checking Using MapReduce

The problem of checking a logged event trace against a temporal logic specification arises in many practical cases. Unfortunately, known algorithms for an expressive logic like MTL (Metric Temporal Logic) do not scale with respect to two crucial dimensions: the length of the trace and the size of the time interval for which logged events must be buffered to check satisfaction of the specification. The former issue can be addressed by distributed and parallel trace checking algorithms that can take advantage of modern cloud computing and programming frameworks like MapReduce. Still, the latter issue remains open with current state-of-the-art approaches. In this paper we address this memory scalability issue by proposing a new semantics for MTL, called lazy semantics. This semantics can evaluate temporal formulae and boolean combinations of temporal-only formulae at any arbitrary time instant. We prove that lazy semantics is more expressive than standard point-based semantics and that it can be used as a basis for a correct parametric decomposition of any MTL formula into an equivalent one with smaller, bounded time intervals. We use lazy semantics to extend our previous distributed trace checking algorithm for MTL. We evaluate the proposed algorithm in terms of memory scalability and time/memory tradeoffs.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figure

Software Process Validation: Quantitatively Measuring the Correspondence of a Process to a Model ; CU-CS-840-97

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Validating real-time systems by history-checking TRIO specifications

We emphasize the importance of formal executable specifications in the development of real-time systems, as a means to assess the adequacy of the requirements before a costly development process takes place. TRIO is a first order temporal logic language for executable specification of real-time systems that deals with time in a quantitative way by providing a metric to indicate distance in time between events and length of time intervals. We summarize the language and its model-parametric semantics. Then we present an algorithm to perform history checking, i.e., to check that a history of the system satisfies the specification. This algorithm can be used as a basis for an effective specification testing tool. The algorithm is described, an estimation of its complexity is provided, and the main functionalities of the tool are presented, together with sample test cases. Finally, we draw conclusions and indicate directions of future research