Abstract
In precursory work we have developed causality checking, a fault localization method for concurrent system models relying on the Halpern and Pearl counterfactual model of causation that identifies ordered occurrences of system events as being causal for the violation of non-reachability properties. Our first implementation of causality checking relies on explicit-state model checking. In this paper we propose a symbolic implementation of causality checking based on bounded model checking (BMC) and SAT solving. We show that this BMC-based implementation is efficient for large and complex system models. The technique is evaluated on industrial size models and experimentally compared to the existing explicit state causality checking implementation. BMC-based causality checking turns out to be superior to the explicit state variant in terms of runtime and memory consumption for very large system models.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aljazzar, H., Fischer, M., Grunske, L., Kuntz, M., Leitner-Fischer, F., Leue, S.: Safety analysis of an airbag system using probabilistic FMEA and probabilistic counterexamples. In: Proceedings of the QEST 2009, Sixth International Conference on the Quantitative Evaluation of Systems. IEEE Computer Society (2009)
Baier, C., Katoen, J.P.: Principles of Model Checking. The MIT Press, New York (2008)
Beer, A., Leitner-Fischer, F., Leue, S.: On the relationship of event order logic and linear temporal logic. Technical report soft-14-01, Univ. of Konstanz, Germany, January 2014. http://www.inf.uni-konstanz.de/soft/research/publications/pdf/soft-14-01.pdf, available from: http://www.inf.uni-konstanz.de/soft/research/publications/pdf/soft-14-01.pdf
Beer, A., Kühne, U., Leitner-Fischer, F., Leue, S., Prem, R.: Analysis of an Airport Surveillance Radar using the QuantUM approach. Technical report soft-12-01, Chair for Software Engineering, University of Konstanz (2012). http://www.inf.uni-konstanz.de/soft/research/publications/pdf/soft-12-01.pdf
Beer, I., Ben-David, S., Chockler, H., Orni, A., Trefler, R.: Explaining counterexamples using causality. In: Bouajjani, A., Maler, O. (eds.) CAV 2009. LNCS, vol. 5643, pp. 94–108. Springer, Heidelberg (2009)
Biere, A., Cimatti, A., Clarke, E., Zhu, Y.: Symbolic model checking without BDDs. In: Cleaveland, W.R. (ed.) TACAS 1999. LNCS, vol. 1579, pp. 193–207. Springer, Heidelberg (1999)
Bozzano, M., Cimatti, A., Tapparo, F.: Symbolic fault tree analysis for reactive systems. In: Namjoshi, K.S., Yoneda, T., Higashino, T., Okamura, Y. (eds.) ATVA 2007. LNCS, vol. 4762, pp. 162–176. Springer, Heidelberg (2007)
Bozzano, M., Villafiorita, A.: Improving system reliability via model checking: The FSAP/NuSMV-SA safety analysis platform. In: Anderson, S., Felici, M., Littlewood, B. (eds.) SAFECOMP 2003. LNCS, vol. 2788, pp. 49–62. Springer, Heidelberg (2003)
Cimatti, A., Clarke, E., Giunchiglia, E., Giunchiglia, F., Pistore, M., Roveri, M., Sebastiani, R., Tacchella, A.: NuSMV 2: an opensource tool for symbolic model checking. In: Brinksma, E., Larsen, K.G. (eds.) CAV 2002. LNCS, vol. 2404, p. 359. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)
Gössler, G., Le Métayer, D., Raclet, J.-B.: Causality analysis in contract violation. In: Barringer, H., Falcone, Y., Finkbeiner, B., Havelund, K., Lee, I., Pace, G., Roşu, G., Sokolsky, O., Tillmann, N. (eds.) RV 2010. LNCS, vol. 6418, pp. 270–284. Springer, Heidelberg (2010)
Groce, A., Chaki, S., Kroening, D., Strichman, O.: Error explanation with distance metrics. Int. J. Softw. Tools Technol. Transfer (STTT) 8(3), 229–247 (2006)
Halpern, J., Pearl, J.: Causes and explanations: A structural-model approach. Causes. Br. J. Philos. Sci., Part I 56, 843–887 (2005)
Holzmann, G.J.: The SPIN Model Checker: Primer and Reference Manual. Addision-Wesley, Reading (2003)
de Jonge, M., Ruys, T.C.: The SpinJa model checker. In: van de Pol, J., Weber, M. (eds.) SPIN 2010. LNCS, vol. 6349, pp. 124–128. Springer, Heidelberg (2010)
Kuntz, M., Leitner-Fischer, F., Leue, S.: From probabilistic counterexamples via causality to fault trees. In: Flammini, F., Bologna, S., Vittorini, V. (eds.) SAFECOMP 2011. LNCS, vol. 6894, pp. 71–84. Springer, Heidelberg (2011)
Leitner-Fischer, F.: Causality Checking of Safety-Critical Software and Systems. Ph.D. thesis, Universitét Konstanz, Konstanz (2015). http://kops.uni-konstanz.de/handle/123456789/30778?locale-attribute=en
Leitner-Fischer, F., Leue, S.: QuantUM: Quantitative safety analysis of UML models. In: Proceedings Ninth Workshop on Quantitative Aspects of Programming Languages (QAPL 2011). EPTCS, vol. 57, pp. 16–30 (2011)
Leitner-Fischer, F., Leue, S.: Causality checking for complex system models. In: Giacobazzi, R., Berdine, J., Mastroeni, I. (eds.) VMCAI 2013. LNCS, vol. 7737, pp. 248–267. Springer, Heidelberg (2013)
Leitner-Fischer, F., Leue, S.: Probabilistic fault tree synthesis using causality computation. Int. J. Critical Comput.-Based Syst. 4, 119–143 (2013)
Leitner-Fischer, F., Leue, S.: Spincause: A tool for causality checking. In: Proceedings of the International SPIN Symposium on Model Checking of Software (SPIN 2014). ACM, San Jose (2014)
Lewis, D.: Counterfactuals. Blackwell Publishers, Oxford (1973)
Pnueli, A.: The temporal logic of programs. In: 18th Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science, pp. 46–57. IEEE (1977)
Vesely, W.E., Goldberg, F.F., Roberts, N.H., Haasl, D.F.: Fault Tree Handbook. Tech. rep., Defense Technical Information Center OAI-PMH Repository [http://stinet.dtic.mil/oai/oai] (United States) (2002). http://handle.dtic.mil/100.2/ADA354973
Acknowledgements
We wish to acknowledge early discussions with John Rushby and Alessandro Cimatti on solving causality checking using bounded model checking.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this paper
Cite this paper
Beer, A., Heidinger, S., Kühne, U., Leitner-Fischer, F., Leue, S. (2015). Symbolic Causality Checking Using Bounded Model Checking. In: Fischer, B., Geldenhuys, J. (eds) Model Checking Software. SPIN 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9232. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23404-5_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23404-5_14
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-23403-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-23404-5
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)