Abstract
The Live Sequence Charts (LSC) language is a formally rigorous variant of the well-known scenario language Message Sequence Charts (MSC). LSCs yield expressive power by means to distinguish mandatory and scenario behaviour, means to characterise by another scenario the context in which a specification applies, and means to distinguish required from possible progress, i.e. to require liveness.
From the original proposal by Damm & Harel [1], two slightly different dialects emerged, one in the context of LSC play-in and -out [2] and one for the use of LSCs as formal requirements specification language in formal, model-based approaches to software development [3].
In this paper, we investigate the expressive power of LSCs in the sense of [3]. That is, we first (constructively) show that for each LSC there is an equivalent CTL* formula. Complementing existing work, we show that the containment is strict, that is, not each CTL* formula has an equivalent LSC. To complete the discussion, we present for the first time a way back, from a syntactically characterised fragment of CTL* to the subset of bonded LSC specifications, thereby establishing an equivalence.
This work was partly supported by the German Research Council (DFG) in SFB/TR 14 AVACS and in project DA 206/7-3 (USE), SPP 1064.
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Damm, W., Toben, T., Westphal, B. (2007). On the Expressive Power of Live Sequence Charts. In: Reps, T., Sagiv, M., Bauer, J. (eds) Program Analysis and Compilation, Theory and Practice. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 4444. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-71322-7_11
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