Authors:
Ralph Hoch
and
Hermann Kaindl
Affiliation:
TU Wien, Austria
Keyword(s):
Verification, Fluent Calculus, Situation Calculus, Model Checking.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Formal Methods
;
Simulation and Modeling
;
Software Engineering
;
Software Engineering Methods and Techniques
Abstract:
Previously, an approach based on the Situation Calculus was published for specifying feature coordination
of a software system, but without a physical model or any additional autonomous agent in the environment.
Hence, no verification of the feature coordination was possible in spite of its formal specification. Verification
of safety-critical feature coordination is important, however, and requires additional models. This paper shows
that a specification of a software coordinator can be formally verified using the Fluent Calculus (a derivative
of the Situation Calculus), when combined with additional models. The overall qualitative model is a reimplementation
of a recently published one based on synchronized finite-state machines, which was used for
model checking. In fact, we show how the model in Fluent Calculus can be systematically derived from the
finite-state machines. The results of verification using the Fluent Calculus correspond to those using model
checking. We a
lso contrast our approach using the Fluent Calculus with model checking. In summary, we
present verification of (safety-critical) feature coordination using the Fluent Calculus.
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