Validating Z Specifications Using the ProB Animator and Model Checker

Plagge, Daniel; Leuschel, Michaël

doi:10.1007/978-3-540-73210-5_25

Cited by 46 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…The Alloy analyser [22] supports a very expressive language, but is not a temporal logic model checker. ProB [23] is an animator and model checker for B specifications that can detect deadlocks and invariant violations. The Verifast tool [24] provides support for verifying fractional permissions in a similar fashion to Plural.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

A case study on the lightweight verification of a multi-threaded task server

Cataño

Ahmed²,

Siminiceanu

et al. 2014

Science of Computer Programming

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We present a case study of verifying the design of a commercial multi-threaded task server (MTTS), developed by the Novabase company, used for massively parallelising computational tasks. In a first stage, we employed the Plural tool, which is designed to perform lightweight verification of Java programs using a Data Flow Analysis (DFA) framework, to specify and verify the MTTS. We wrote the Plural specification for the MTTS based on the code developed by Novabase, its informal documentation, and our discussions with Novabase engineers, who validated our understanding of the MTTS application. The Plural specification language is based on typestates and access permissions. In a second stage, we developed the Pulse tool that enhances the analysis performed by Plural, and used the tool on the MTTS specifications. Pulse translates Plural specifications into an abstract state-machine model that captures the semantics of all the possible concurrent programs implementing the given specifications, and uses the evmdd-smc symbolic model-checker to verify the machine model. The experimental results on the MTTS specification show that the exhaustive model-checking approach scales reasonably well and is efficient at finding errors in specifications that were not previously detected with the Data Flow Analysis (DFA) capabilities of Plural.

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

A case study on the lightweight verification of a multi-threaded task server

Cataño

Ahmed²,

Siminiceanu

et al. 2014

Science of Computer Programming

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show abstract

“…In particular, ProB has been successfully applied to an industrial case study (cf. Section 1) which was hitherto impossible to animate or model check, and was able to detect an error in the original specification [12].…”

Section: Higher-order Functional Programming Examples In Bmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some specifications, however, contain complicated functions or sets which cannot be represented explicitly. Take the following recursive function over sequences of sequences, coming from an industrial case study [12]: Intuitively, the above function takes a sequence of sequences and removes duplicates (i.e., the last element of a sequence is identical to the first element of the next sequence). This is represented as a recursive function, and is part of a larger algorithm.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Validating and Animating Higher-Order Recursive Functions in B

Leuschel

Cansell

Butler

2009

Rigorous Methods for Software Construction and Analysis

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Abstract. ProB is an animation and model checking tool for the B Method, which can deal with many interesting specifications. Some specifications, however, contain complicated functions which cannot be represented explicitly by a tool. We present a scheme with which higher-order recursive functions can be encoded in B, and establish soundness of this scheme. We then describe a symbolic representation for such functions. This representation enables ProB to successfully animate and model check a new class of relevant specifications, where animation is especially important due to the involved nature of the specification.

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“…However, in [13] it was shown how Z models could be translated into B models and how PROB could be used to model check Z specifications. Also, in [9], we have developed an LTL model checker for PROB, which can be correctly applied without restriction in the presence of symmetry reduction.…”

Section: Conclusion and Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

ProB gets Nauty: Effective Symmetry Reduction for B and Z Models

Spermann

Leuschel

2008

2008 2nd IFIP/IEEE International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Software Engineering

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Symmetry reduction holds great promise to counter the state explosion problem. However, currently it is "conducting a life on the fringe", and is not widely applied, mainly due to the restricted applicability of many of the techniques. In this paper we propose a symmetry reduction technique applied to high-level formal specification languages (B and Z). Not only does symmetry arise naturally in most models, it can also be exploited without restriction by our method. This method translates states of a formal model into directed graphs, and then uses graph canonicalisation to detect symmetries. We use the tool NAUTY to efficiently perform graph canonicalisation, which we have interfaced with the model checker PROB.In this paper we present the general technique, show how states can be translated first into vertex-coloured graphs suitable for NAUTY. We present empirical results, showing the effectiveness of our method as well as analysing the cost of graph canonicalisation.

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Validating Z Specifications Using the ProB Animator and Model Checker

Cited by 46 publications

References 17 publications

A case study on the lightweight verification of a multi-threaded task server

A case study on the lightweight verification of a multi-threaded task server

Validating and Animating Higher-Order Recursive Functions in B

ProB gets Nauty: Effective Symmetry Reduction for B and Z Models

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