Formal Specification and Analysis of Timing Properties in Software Systems

Abstract

Abstract. Specifying and analyzing timing properties is a critical but error-prone aspect of developing many modern software systems. In this paper, we propose a new specification language and analysis framework for expressing and analyzing timing behaviors of complex software systems. Our framework has the following significant benefits: a) it is expressive, b) it supports trace analysis and simulation of timing behaviors, c) allows for verification of properties of specification, and d) checks for common usage errors of timing constructs. The language constructs for timing were chosen to be very flexible, suitable for expressing different kinds of timing behaviors, and are inspired from timing constructs used in previous languages like SDL. We define the formal semantics of our language using a real-time rewrite theory. Since real-time rewrite theories are executable in Real-Time Maude, our framework supports trace analysis and simulation of timing behavior for specifications. Furthermore, the timed model checker for Real-Time Maude can be readily used for analyzing and verifying various real-time properties of the specifications. Finally, to prevent misuses of timing constructs that can be made possible due to their flexibility, we develop abstract interpretation based static analysis tools that check for common usage errors. We believe that our framework, with the above benefits, provides a significant step forward in facilitating the use of formal tools for specification and analysis of timing behaviors in software development.

Twenty years of rewriting logic

“…In [19], AlTurki et al present a language for real-time concurrent programming for industrial use in DOCOMO Labs called L. The goal of L is to serve as a programming model for higher-level software specifications in SDL or UML. A related goal is to support formal analysis of L programs by both real-time model checking and static analysis, so that software design errors can be caught at design time.…”

“…All this means that reasoning modulo such axioms is an essential feature of security proofs, since attacks can be mounted using them. The Maude-NPA does exactly this by: (i) axiomatizing a protocol P as a (topmost) rewrite theory ( P , E P ∪ B, R P ), where P's equational properties are axiomatized by the equations E P ∪ B, and P's transitions are axiomatized by the rules R P ; (ii) characterizing attack patterns as terms with variables describing a possibly infinite set of concrete attack states; and (iii) using the rules R P in reverse 19 to search for an initial state from the given attack pattern p. This is accomplished by narrowing p with the reversed rules R −1 P modulo E P ∪ B, which, as explained in Section 3.3 and in [340], is a complete reachability analysis method for topmost rewrite theories. Of course this still leaves the problem of computing E P ∪ B-unifiers.…”

A Step-Wise Approach for Integrating QoS throughout Software Development

“…These constraints are not only used to check the requirements compatibility according to the architecture, but also to predict the QoS from the number of instances of each component. AlTurki et al propose a real-time rewriting model backing a timing specification language [2]. It allows them to verify various real-time properties using the Maude rewriting engine.…”

Formal Model Engineering for Embedded Systems Using Real-Time Maude

“…In [1], Musab AlTurki and researchers at DOCOMO USA Labs describe a simple but powerful specification language, called L , that is claimed to be well suited for describing a spectrum of behaviors of various software systems. The language provides flexible SDL-inspired timing constructs that yield a more expressive language for timed behaviors than Erlang [12], since some nested timing patterns, which can be expressed in L , are not expressible in Erlang [1]. The language has an expression language, imperative features for describing sequential computations, and asynchronously communicating processes that can be dynamically created or destroyed.…”