Validation Of Reactive Systems Research Articles

Systematic testing and formal verification to validate reactive programs

The use of systematic testing and formal verification in the validation of reactive systems implemented in synchronous languages is illustrated. Systematic testing and formal verification are two techniques for checking the consistency between a program and its specification. The approach to validation is through specification: two system views are developed in addition to the program, a behavioural specification for systematic testing and a logical specification for formal verification. Pursuing both activities, reactive programs can be validated both more efficiently (in terms of costs) and more effectively (in terms of confidence in correctness). This principle is demonstrated here using the well known lift example.

Some timing aspects of software development for reactive systems: The two-axis paradigm

This article is about specification of timing at each step in the software development cycle. It examines how to express timing constraints along two main abstract axes. The first axis is the development steps; timing constraints at the specification level are not asserted in the same way as timing constraints at the design or implementation level because of validation. The second axis is the multilevel control architecture, in which timing constraints are harder at the lower levels; at this point it is necessary to introduce a timing abstraction to make time calculus effective at all levels. In this context, we propose a temporal language, Zaman, to express timing constraints and deepen the two-axis paradigm for timing constraint expression. This work seeks to open new research directions in the field of timing specification and validation of reactive systems and gives a preliminary basis for further study.