Deductive Verification of UML Models in TLPVS

Abstract

In recent years, UML has been applied to the development of reactive safety-critical systems, in which the quality of the developed software is a key factor. In this paper we present an approach for the deductive verification of such systems using the PVS interactive theorem prover. Using a PVS specification of a UML kernel language semantics, we generate a formal representation of the UML model. This representation is then verified using TLPVS, our PVS-based implementation of linear temporal logic and some of its proof rules. We apply our method by verifying two examples, demonstrating the feasibility of our approach on models with unbounded event queues, object creation, and variables of unbounded domain. We define a notion of fairness for UML systems, allowing us to verify both safety and liveness properties. © Springer-Verlag 2004.