Model checking distributed systems against temporal-epistemic specifications

Abstract

Concurrency and message reordering are two main causes for the state-explosion in distributed systems with asynchronous communication. We study this domain by analysing ABS, an executable modelling language for object-based distributed systems and present a symbolic model checking methodology for verifying ABS programs against temporal-epistemic specifications. Specifically, we show how to map an ABS program into an ISPL program for verification with MCMAS, a model checker for multi-agent systems. We present a compiler implementing the formal map, exemplify the methodology on a mesh network use case and report experimental results. © 2013 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.