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Automata Learning through Counterexample Guided Abstraction Refinement

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FM 2012: Formal Methods (FM 2012)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 7436))

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Abstract

Abstraction is the key when learning behavioral models of realistic systems. Hence, in most practical applications where automata learning is used to construct models of software components, researchers manually define abstractions which, depending on the history, map a large set of concrete events to a small set of abstract events that can be handled by automata learning tools. In this article, we show how such abstractions can be constructed fully automatically for a restricted class of extended finite state machines in which one can test for equality of data parameters, but no operations on data are allowed. Our approach uses counterexample-guided abstraction refinement: whenever the current abstraction is too coarse and induces nondeterministic behavior, the abstraction is refined automatically. Using Tomte, a prototype tool implementing our algorithm, we have succeeded to learn – fully automatically – models of several realistic software components, including the biometric passport and the SIP protocol.

Supported by STW project 11763 Integrating Testing And Learning of Interface Automata (ITALIA) and EU FP7 grant no 214755 (QUASIMODO).

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Aarts, F., Heidarian, F., Kuppens, H., Olsen, P., Vaandrager, F. (2012). Automata Learning through Counterexample Guided Abstraction Refinement. In: Giannakopoulou, D., Méry, D. (eds) FM 2012: Formal Methods. FM 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7436. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32759-9_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32759-9_4

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-32758-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-32759-9

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