Model Checking Merged Program Traces

Abstract

During a program's execution, state information can be collected and stored in the form of program traces. With such traces, one can analyze dynamic properties of the program. In this paper, we consider the problem of merging multiple traces from the same program in order to compose an approximate temporal model of its behavior. With such a model one can perform model checking based on both linear- and branching-time logics. To this end, we formally define what we mean by program trace and present some algorithms to perform trace merging. We show that each of these algorithms yield a different kind of temporal model, appropriate for different kinds of analyses. Our method is motivated by the possibility of analyzing simulations in a way that has not been done so far, and thus is developed with the needs of such a domain in mind. To demonstrate the practical feasibility of the proposed theoretical approach, we explain how to actually perform model checking of our temporal models using the NuSMV tool. Moreover, we provide proof-of-concept Java implementations of the proposed trace merging algorithms, which output NuSMV specifications. We also describe a simple case study using this implementation.