Verifying temporal properties of systems with applications to petri nets

This thesis provides a powerful general-purpose proof technique for the verification of systems, whether finite or infinite. It extends the idea of finite local model-checking, which was introduced by Stirling and Walker: rather than traversing the entire state space of a model, as is done for model-checking in the sense of Emerson, Clarke et al. (checking whether a (finite) model satisfies a formula), local model-checking asks whether a particular state satisfies a formula, and only explores the nearby states far enough to answer that question. The technique used was a tableau method, constructing a tableau according to the formula and the local structure of the model. This tableau technique is here generalized to the infinite case by considering sets of states, rather than single states; because the logic used, the propositional modal mu-calculus, separates simple modal and boolean connectives from powerful fix-point operators (which make the logic more expressive than many other temporal logics), it is possible to give a relatively straightforward set of rules for constructing a tableau. Much of the subtlety is removed from the tableau itself, and put into a relation on the state space defined by the tableau-the success of the tableau then depends on the well-foundedness of this relation. This development occupies the second and third chapters: the second considers the modal mu-calculus, and explains its power, while the third develops the tableau technique itself The generalized tableau technique is exhibited on Petri nets, and various standard notions from net theory are shown to play a part in the use of the technique on nets-in particular, the invariant calculus has a major role. The requirement for a finite presentation of tableaux for infinite systems raises the question of the expressive power of the mu-calculus. This is studied in some detail, and it is shown that on reasonably powerful models of computation, such as Petri nets, the mu-calculus can express properties that are not merely undecidable, but not even arithmetical. The concluding chapter discusses some of the many questions still to be answered, such as the incorporation of formal reasoning within the tableau system, and the power required of such reasoning

On Modelling and Analysis of Dynamic Reconfiguration of Dependable Real-Time Systems

This paper motivates the need for a formalism for the modelling and analysis of dynamic reconfiguration of dependable real-time systems. We present requirements that the formalism must meet, and use these to evaluate well established formalisms and two process algebras that we have been developing, namely, Webpi and CCSdp. A simple case study is developed to illustrate the modelling power of these two formalisms. The paper shows how Webpi and CCSdp represent a significant step forward in modelling adaptive and dependable real-time systems.Comment: Presented and published at DEPEND 201

Computer-aided analysis of concurrent systems

The introduction of concurrency into programs has added to the complexity of the software design process. This is most evident in the design of communications protocols where concurrency is inherent to the behavior of the system. The complexity exhibited by such software systems makes more evident the needs for computer-aided tools for automatically analyzing behavior.The Distributed Systems project at UCI has been developing a suite of tools, based on Petri nets, which support the design and evaluation of concurrent software systems. This paper focuses attention on one of the tools: the reachability graph analyzer (RGA). This tool provides mechanisms for proving general system properties (e.g., deadlock-freeness) as well as system-specific properties. The tool is sufficiently general to allow a user to apply complex user-defined analysis algorithms to reachability graphs. The alternating-bit protocol with a bounded channel is used to demonstrate the power of the tool and to point to future extensions

Dependability Analysis of Control Systems using SystemC and Statistical Model Checking

Stochastic Petri nets are commonly used for modeling distributed systems in order to study their performance and dependability. This paper proposes a realization of stochastic Petri nets in SystemC for modeling large embedded control systems. Then statistical model checking is used to analyze the dependability of the constructed model. Our verification framework allows users to express a wide range of useful properties to be verified which is illustrated through a case study

A System for Deduction-based Formal Verification of Workflow-oriented Software Models

The work concerns formal verification of workflow-oriented software models using deductive approach. The formal correctness of a model's behaviour is considered. Manually building logical specifications, which are considered as a set of temporal logic formulas, seems to be the significant obstacle for an inexperienced user when applying the deductive approach. A system, and its architecture, for the deduction-based verification of workflow-oriented models is proposed. The process of inference is based on the semantic tableaux method which has some advantages when compared to traditional deduction strategies. The algorithm for an automatic generation of logical specifications is proposed. The generation procedure is based on the predefined workflow patterns for BPMN, which is a standard and dominant notation for the modeling of business processes. The main idea for the approach is to consider patterns, defined in terms of temporal logic,as a kind of (logical) primitives which enable the transformation of models to temporal logic formulas constituting a logical specification. Automation of the generation process is crucial for bridging the gap between intuitiveness of the deductive reasoning and the difficulty of its practical application in the case when logical specifications are built manually. This approach has gone some way towards supporting, hopefully enhancing our understanding of, the deduction-based formal verification of workflow-oriented models.Comment: International Journal of Applied Mathematics and Computer Scienc