v-Promela: a visual, object-oriented language for SPIN

Describes the design of VIP (Visual Interface for Promela), a graphical front-end to the model checker SPIN. VIP supports a visual formalism, called v-Promela, that connects the model checker to modern hierarchical notations for the specification of object-oriented, reactive systems. The formalism is comparable to formalisms such as UML-RT (Unified Modeling Language for Real-Time systems), ROOM (Real-time Object-Oriented Modeling) and Statecharts, but is presented in this paper in a framework that allows us to combine the benefits of a visual, hierarchical specification method with the power of LTL (linear temporal logic) model checking provided by SPIN. Like comparable formalisms, VIP can describe hierarchies of behaviour and of system structure. The formalism is designed to be transparent to the SPIN model checker itself, by allowing all central constructs to be translated mechanically into basic Promela, as already supported by the existing model checker.