starMC: an automata based CTL* model checker

Model-checking of temporal logic formulae is a widely used technique for the verification of systems. CTL [Image: see text] is a temporal logic that allows to consider an intermix of both branching behaviours (like in CTL) and linear behaviours (LTL), overcoming the limitations of LTL (that cannot express “possibility”) and CTL (cannot fully express fairness). Nevertheless CTL [Image: see text] model-checkers are uncommon. This paper presents (1) the algorithms for a fully symbolic automata-based approach for CTL [Image: see text] , and (2) their implementation in the open-source tool starMC, a CTL [Image: see text] model checker for systems specified as Petri nets. Testing has been conducted on thousands of formulas over almost a hundred models. The experiments show that the fully symbolic automata-based approach of starMC can compute the set of states that satisfy a CTL [Image: see text] formula for very large models (non trivial formulas for state spaces larger than 10(480) states are evaluated in less than a minute)

Autonomous Transitions Enhance CSLTA Expressiveness and Conciseness

CSLTA is a stochastic temporal logic for continuous-time Markov chains (CTMC) where formulas similarly to those of CTL* are inductively defined by nesting of timed path formulas and state formulas. In particular a timed path formula of CSLTA is specified by a single-clock Deterministic Timed Automaton (DTA). Such a DTA features two kinds of transitions: synchronizing transitions triggered by CTMC transitions and autonomous transitions triggered by time elapsing that change the location of the DTA when the clock reaches a given threshold. It has already been shown that CSLTA strictly includes stochastic logics like CSL and asCSL. An interesting variant of CSLTA consists in equipping transitions rather than locations by boolean formulas. Here we answer the following question: do autonomous transitions and/or boolean guards on transitions enhance expressiveness and/or conciseness of DTAs? We show that this is indeed the case. In establishing our main results we also identify an accurate syntactical characterization of DTAs for which the autonomous transitions do not add expressive power but lead to exponentially more concise DTAs