Real-time system validation by model checking in TRIO

The authors discuss the importance of formal, executable specifications in supporting validation and early prototyping of real-time systems. TRIO is a first-order temporal logic language which allows the description of quantitative aspects of time like distance in time between events and length of time intervals. They summarise the language syntax and its model-theoretic semantics. Then they present two algorithms which, under suitable conditions, decide the satisfiability of TRIO formulas and perform model checking. A tool for testing TRIO specifications, based on an efficient implementation of the model-checking algorithm, is introduced, and its main features are described, together with sample testing sessions