Verifying Erlang/OTP Components in μCRL

Abstract

Abstract. Erlang is a concurrent functional programming language with explicit support for real-time and fault-tolerant distributed systems. Generic components encapsulated as design patterns are provided by the Open Telecom Platform (OTP) library. Although Erlang has many highlevel features, verification is still non-trivial. One (existing) approach is to perform an abstraction of an Erlang program into the process algebra µCRL, upon which standard verification tools can be applied. In this paper we extend this work and propose a model that supports the translation of an OTP finite state machine design pattern into a µCRL specification. Then a standard toolset such as CADP can be applied in order to check properties that should hold for the system under development. Two small examples are presented, which experimentally show how the proposed model assists in model checking Erlang OTP components in µCRL.

Verification of timed erlang/OTP components using the process algebra μcrl

“…Translation of the Erlang finite state machine (FSM) design pattern was studied in [15]. By extending the approach discussed in [3,6,7], a model was proposed to support the translation of an Erlang FSM component into μCRL.…”

“…These considerably simplify the building of systems. In [15], the verification of OTP FSM programs using μCRL has been studied, and a model is proposed to support the translation of an Erlang FSM program into μCRL. In order to define the correct translation, and techniques proposed in [16] are applied to deal with the presence of overlapping patterns in pattern matching.…”

Verifying Erlang Telecommunication Systems with the Process Algebra μCRL

“…This is then translated into μCRL using techniques defined in [14], where the translation process is comprised of two parts, simulating state management (SSM) and state function translation (SFT).…”

“…A number of possible approaches have been explored, including the one we investigate here: abstract an Erlang application into a formal model, upon which model checking [9] techniques can be applied. This approach has recently been applied to the verification of Erlang programs and OTP components [2,3,5,7,14,16] where the process algebra μCRL [13] has been used as the formal language upon which verification is carried out.…”

“…Benac-Earle [5] continued with the work and developed a toolset, etomcrl, to automate the process of translation. Guo et al extended the work by proposing a model for the translation of the OTP finite state machine gen fsm [14] and defining rules for coping with Erlang timeout events in μCRL [16].…”