Selective quantitative analysis and interval model checking: Verifying different facets of a system

Abstract

In this work we propose a verification methodology consisting of selective quantitative timing analysis and interval model checking. Our methods can aid not only in determining if a system works correctly, but also in understanding how well the system works. The selective quantitative algorithms compute minimum and maximum delays over a selected subset of system executions. A linear-time temporal logic (LTL) formula is used to select either infinite paths or finite intervals over which the computation is performed. We show how tableaux for LTL formulas can be used for selecting either paths or intervals and also for model checking formulas interpreted over paths or intervals. To demonstrate the usefulness of our methods we have verified a complex and realistic distributed real-time system: Our tool has been able to analyze the system and to compute the response time of the various components. Moreover, we have been able to identify inefficiencies that caused the response time to increase significantly (about 50%). After changing the design we not only verified that the response time was lower, but were also able to determine the causes for the poor performance of the original model using interval model checking.