System Modelling

Abstract

This chapter discusses how to develop a formal model of a system that can be used for model checking. The basic idea of model checking is the following: (i) you define a model that describes the behaviour of your system, (ii) you specify the properties that your system is supposed to satisfy, and (iii) you use a model checking tool to analyse all possible behaviour of the model to verify whether those properties are actually satisfied by the model. The models that we consider here are abstract descriptions of actual software, meaning that the models typically address the functionality of the software in a simplified way, with certain details of the software being ignored. These models can therefore be considered as high-level designs of actual software systems. In a software development workflow, such a model may be used as a basis, and the software may result from incrementally refining the model into actual code. Alternatively, such a model may be the result of analysing already existing software, for instance, by using a model learning algorithm [158].