Compositionality and locality for improving model checking in the selective mu-calculus

Abstract

Model checking is an automatic technique for verifying properties of finite concurrent systems on a structure that represents the states of the system; the crucial point of the technique is to avoid the computation of all the possible states. In this paper a method of proof for concurrent systems is presented that combines several approaches to meet the previous goal. The method exploits compositionality issues, in the presence of a parallel composition of processes, to compute at most the states of each sequential process, and not their combinations; moreover the method employs abstraction techniques to compute but a subset of the states of each sequential process. Finally, tableau-based proofs are used to allow the dynamic generation of the system states when needed, taking into account the goal of the formula verification. The tableau system is proved finite, sound and complete, for finite state systems.