Our growing dependence on increasingly complex computer and software systems necessitates the development of formalisms, techniques, and tools for assessing functional properties of these systems. One such technique that has emerged in the last twenty years is model checking, which systematically (and automatically) checks whether a model of a given system satisfies a desired property such as deadlock freedom, invariants, and request-response properties. This automated technique for verification and debugging has developed into a mature and widely used approach with many applications. Principles of Model Checking offers a comprehensive introduction to model checking that is not only a text suitable for classroom use but also a valuable reference for researchers and practitioners in the field. The book begins with the basic principles for modeling concurrent and communicating systems, introduces different classes of properties (including safety and liveness), presents the notion of fairness, and provides automata-based algorithms for these properties. It introduces the temporal logics LTL and CTL, compares them, and covers algorithms for verifying these logics, discussing real-time systems as well as systems subject to random phenomena. Separate chapters treat such efficiency-improving techniques as abstraction and symbolic manipulation. The book includes an extensive set of examples (most of which run through several chapters) and a complete set of basic results accompanied by detailed proofs. Each chapter concludes with a summary, bibliographic notes, and an extensive list of exercises of both practical and theoretical nature.

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Principles of Model Checking

N G van Kampen 1981 Amsterdam: North-Holland xiv + 419 pp price Dfl 180 This is a book which, at a lower price, could be expected to become an essential part of the library of every physical scientist concerned with problems involving fluctuations and stochastic processes, as well as those who just enjoy a beautifully written book. It provides an extensive graduate-level introduction which is clear, cautious, interesting and readable.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0031-9112/34/4/040/pdf

Stochastic Processes in Physics and Chemistry

This paper describes a major new release of the PRISMprobabilistic model checker, adding, in particular, quantitative verification of (priced) probabilistic timed automata. These model systems exhibiting probabilistic, nondeterministic and real-time characteristics. In many application domains, all three aspects are essential; this includes, for example, embedded controllers in automotive or avionic systems, wireless communication protocols such as Bluetooth or Zigbee, and randomised security protocols. PRISM, which is open-source, also contains several new components that are of independent use. These include: an extensible toolkit for building, verifying and refining abstractions of probabilistic models; an explicit-state probabilistic model checking library; a discrete-event simulation engine for statistical model checking; support for generation of optimal adversaries/strategies; and a benchmark suite.

http://www.prismmodelchecker.org/papers/cav11.pdf

PRISM 4.0: verification of probabilistic real-time systems

This paper presents the overal structure, the design criteria, and the main features of the tool box Uppaal. It gives a detailed user guide which describes how to use the various tools of Uppaal version 2.02 to construct abstract models of a real-time system, to simulate its dynamical behavior, to specify and verify its safety and bounded liveness properties in terms of its model. In addition, the paper also provides a short review on case-studies where Uppaal is applied, as well as references to its theoretical foundation.

UPPAAL in a Nutshell

Real and Complex Analysis

Testing of Finite State Machines.- I. Testing of Finite State Machines.- 1 Homing and Synchronizing Sequences.- 2 State Identification.- 3 State Verification.- 4 Conformance Testing.- II. Testing of Labeled Transition Systems.- Testing of Labeled Transition Systems.- 5 Preorder Relations.- 6 Test Generation Algorithms Based on Preorder Relations.- 7 I/O-automata Based Testing.- 8 Test Derivation from Timed Automata.- 9 Testing Theory for Probabilistic Systems.- III. Model-Based Test Case Generation.- Model-Based Test Case Generation.- 10 Methodological Issues in Model-Based Testing.- 11 Evaluating Coverage Based Testing.- 12 Technology of Test-Case Generation.- 13 Real-Time and Hybrid Systems Testing.- IV. Tools and Case Studies.- Tools and Case Studies.- 14 Tools for Test Case Generation.- 15 Case Studies.- V. Standardized Test Notation and Execution Architecture.- Standardized Test Notation and Execution Architecture.- 16 TTCN-3.- 17 UML 2.0 Testing Profile.- VI. Beyond Testing.- Beyond Testing.- 18 Run-Time Verification.- 19 Model Checking.- VII. Appendices.- Appendices.- 20 Model-Based Testing - A Glossary.- 21 Finite State Machines.- 22 Labelled Transition Systems.

Model-Based Testing of Reactive Systems, Advanced Lectures [The volume is the outcome of a research seminar that was held in Schloss Dagstuhl in January 2004]

Fault trees are a popular industrial technique for reliability modelling and analysis. Their extension with common reliability patterns, such as spare management, functional dependencies, and sequencing -- known as dynamic fault trees DFTs -- has an adverse effect on scalability, prohibiting the analysis of complex, industrial cases by, e.g., probabilistic model checkers. This paper presents a novel, fully automated reduction technique for DFTs. The key idea is to interpret DFTs as directed graphs and exploit graph rewriting to simplify them. We present a collection of rewrite rules, address their correctness, and give a simple heuristic to determine the order of rewriting. Experiments on a large set of benchmarks show substantial DFT simplifications, yielding state space reductions and timing gains of up to two orders of magnitude.

Fault Trees on a Diet

Modelling Stochastic Systems.- Probabilistic Automata: System Types, Parallel Composition and Comparison.- Tutte le Algebre Insieme: Concepts, Discussions and Relations of Stochastic Process Algebras with General Distributions.- An Overview of Probabilistic Process Algebras and Their Equivalences.- Model Checking of Stochastic Systems.- Verifying Qualitative Properties of Probabilistic Programs.- On Probabilistic Computation Tree Logic.- Model Checking for Probabilistic Timed Systems.- Representing Large State Spaces.- Serial Disk-Based Analysis of Large Stochastic Models.- Kronecker Based Matrix Representations for Large Markov Models.- Symbolic Representations and Analysis of Large Probabilistic Systems.- Probabilistic Methods in State Space Analysis.- Deductive Verification of Stochastic Systems.- Analysing Randomized Distributed Algorithms.- An Abstraction Framework for Mixed Non-deterministic and Probabilistic Systems.- The Verification of Probabilistic Lossy Channel Systems.

Validation of Stochastic Systems : A Guide to Current Research

Probabilistic model checkers typically provide a list of individual state probabilities on the refutation of a temporal logic formula. For large state spaces, this information is far too detailed to act as useful diagnostic feedback. For quantitative (constrained) reachability problems, sets of paths that carry enough probability mass are more adequate. We recently have shown that in the context of discrete-time probabilistic processes, such sets of smallest size can be efficiently computed by (hop-constrained) k-shortest path algorithms. This paper considers the problem of generating counterexamples for continuous-time Markov chains. The key contribution is a set of approximate algorithms for computing small sets of paths that indicate the violation of time-bounded (constrained) reachability probabilities.

Providing evidence of likely being on time: counterexample generation for CTMC model checking

This paper discusses a timed variant of a process algebra akin to LOTOS, baptized UPA, in a causality-based setting. Two timed features are incorporated—a delay function which constrains the occurrence time of atomic actions and an urgency operator that forces (local or synchronized) actions to happen urgently. Timeouts are typical urgent phenomena. A novel timed extension of event structures is introduced and used as a vehicle to provide a denotational causality-based semantics for UPA. Recursion is dealt with by using standard fixpoint theory. In addition, an operational semantics is presented based on separate time- and action-transitions that is shown to be consistent with the event structure semantics. An interleaving semantics for UPA is immediately obtained from the operational semantics. By adopting this dual approach the well-developed timed interleaving view is extended with a consistent timed partial order view and a comparison is facilitated of the partial order model and the variety of existing (interleaved) timed process algebras.

Joost-Pieter Katoen

Papers

Model-Based Testing of Reactive Systems, Advanced Lectures [The volume is the outcome of a research seminar that was held in Schloss Dagstuhl in January 2004]

Fault Trees on a Diet

Validation of Stochastic Systems : A Guide to Current Research

Providing evidence of likely being on time: counterexample generation for CTMC model checking

A Consistent Causality-Based View on a Timed Process AlgebraIncluding Urgent Interactions