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Efficient software product-line model checking using induction and a SAT solver

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Abstract

Software product line (SPL) engineering is increasingly being adopted in safety-critical systems. It is highly desirable to rigorously show that these systems are designed correctly. However, formal analysis for SPLs is more difficult than for single systems because an SPL may contain a large number of individual systems. In this paper, we propose an efficient model-checking technique for SPLs using induction and a SAT (Boolean satisfiability problem) solver. We show how an induction-based verification method can be adapted to the SPLs, with the help of a SAT solver. To combat the state space explosion problem, a novel technique that exploits the distinguishing characteristics of SPLs, called feature cube enlargement, is proposed to reduce the verification efforts. The incremental SAT mechanism is applied to further improve the efficiency. The correctness of our technique is proved. Experimental results show dramatic improvement of our technique over the existing binary decision diagram (BDD)-based techniques.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program) (2010CB328003), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61672310, 61272001, 60903030, 91218302), and the Chinese National Key Technology R&D Program (SQ2012BAJY4052).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tsinghua National Laboratory for Information Science and Technology (TNList), Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Fei He & Yuan Gao

  2. Key Laboratory for Information System Security, Ministry of Education, Beijing, 100084, China

    Fei He & Yuan Gao

  3. School of Software, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Fei He & Yuan Gao

  4. Department of Computer Science and Technology, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, 410073, China

    Liangze Yin

Authors
  1. Fei He
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  2. Yuan Gao
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  3. Liangze Yin
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Fei He.

Additional information

Fei He received a BS degree from National University of Defense Technology, China in 2002 and a PhD degree from Tsinghua University, China in 2008. He is currently an associate professor in the School of Software at Tsinghua University, China. His research interests include satisfiability, model checking, compositional reasoning, and their applications to embedded systems.

Yuan Gao received a BS degree from Nanjing University, China in 2012 and a Master’s degree from Tsinghua University, China in 2015. He is currently a software engineer in Thunisoft Information Technology Co., Ltd, China. His research interests include satisfiability and model checking.

Liangze Yin received a BS degree from National University of Defense Technology, China in 2008 and a PhD degree from Tsinghua University (NUDT), China in 2014. He is currently an assistant professor in the School of Computer at NUDT. His research interests include satisfiability, model checking, program verification, concurrent program verification, and their applications.

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He, F., Gao, Y. & Yin, L. Efficient software product-line model checking using induction and a SAT solver. Front. Comput. Sci. 12, 264–279 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11704-016-6048-7

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