Reducing the gap between verification models and software development models

Abstract

A variety of models and notations are available to support the software developers. Such models help to gather requirements and to build a system implementing these requirements. However, it is often neglected to verify that the requirements are actually fulfilled in the design and implementation. The increasing demand for compliancy to requirements (e.g. due to laws) together with the increasing system complexity re-attracts notice to automatic verification technologies for that purpose. The low user-friendliness and, thus, the low applicability of the verification technologies often prevents their employment. In this paper we aim at closing the gap between software development models with their rich notation and semantics (e.g. Event Process Chains, EPCs) on the one hand and verification-oriented models (typically just simple structures like finite state automata) on the other hand. This is approached by extending the verification model in a controlled manner towards more semantics resulting in our extended Kripke structure. To profit from such a semantic extension we, in addition, extend the temporal logic language CTL. Our new temporal logic language allows to express the expected requirements more precisely. © 2009 IOS Press. All rights reserved.