Specification of realtime systems using ASTRAL

Abstract

Abstract-ASTRAL is a formal specification language for realtime systems. It is intended to support formal software development and, therefore, has been formally defined. The structuring mechanisms in ASTRAL allow one to build modularized specifications of complex systems with layering. A realtime system is modeled by a collection of state machine specifications and a single global specification. This paper discusses the rationale of ASTRAL's design. ASTRAL's specification style is illustrated by discussing a telephony example. Composability of one or more ASTRAL system specifications is also discussed by the introduction of a composition section, which provides the needed information to combine two or more ASTRAL system specifications.

Formal analysis of attacks for e-voting system

“…This paper complements [13] where the authors formally specified the ES&S voting system using the ASTRAL [14] language. A number of critical requirements, as they are documented in the ES&S manuals, have also been specified and analyzed using PVS [15].…”

“…We mapped each of these components to ASTRAL [14] process instances and we also specified security critical requirements to prove the correctness and integrity of the election results.…”

“…In ASTRAL specification exceptions are handled explicitly by adding except/exit pairs in addition to the normal entry/exit pairs[14].…”

Rapid prototyping of real-time reactive systems

“…Various other languages for modelling real-time systems have been proposed, e.g. : RT-ASLAN and its successor ASTRAL [2]. A separate group of specification languages of timed reactive systems is formed by various formal methods like: Real-Time Petri Nets, RT coloured Petri nets [16], process algebras: Timed CCS, RT CSP, RT Lotos, RT ACP and temporal logic.…”

“…A state machine assigned to an appliance runs in its own real-time thread. It corresponds to the situation in the real world, where every dynamic appliance has its own processing unit (in the same way as in [2]). Thus, in the context of RAT, we do not discuss scheduling issues [8] but we rather focus on interactions between different processes.…”