Saturation effects in testing of formal models
Menzies, T.; Owen, D.; Cukic, B.
Software Reliability Engineering, 2002. ISSRE 2002. Proceedings. 13th International Symposium on
Volume , Issue , 2002 Page(s): 15 - 26
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/ISSRE.2002.1173208
Summary:Formal analysis of software is a powerful analysis tool, but can be too costly. Random search of formal models can reduce that cost, but is theoretically incomplete. However, random search of finite-state machines exhibits an early saturation effect, i.e., random search quickly yields all that can be found, even after a much longer search. Hence, we avoid the theoretical problem of incompleteness, provided that testing continues until after the saturation point. Such a random search is rapid, consumes little memory, is simple to implement, and can handle very large formal models (in one experiment shown here, over 10178 states).
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