Formal Verification of Websites

Abstract

In this paper, a model for websites is presented. The model is well-suited for the formal verification of dynamic as well as static properties of the system. A website is defined as a collection of web pages which are semantically connected in some way. External web pages (which are related pages not belonging to the website) are treated as the environment of the system. We also present the logic which is used to specify properties of websites, and illustrate the kinds of properties that can be specified and verified by using a model-checking tool on the system. In this setting, we discuss some interesting properties which often need to be checked when designing websites. We have encoded the model using the specification language Maude which allows us to use the Maude model-checking tool. © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.