Automated Check of Architectural Models Consistency Using SPIN

Architectural description techniques are a key element of the development of large systems. In recent years several formalisms and models have been introduced to represent the software architectural level of description. These models represent SA from different viewpoints, handling different aspects of the system separately and allowing for analysis and validation of the architectural choices, both behavioral and quantitative. Behavioral views are recognized to be one of the most attractive feature in the SA description and in practical contexts, state diagrams and scenarios are the most used tools to model this view. Although very expressive this approach has two drawbacks with respect to analysis and validation: system specification incompleteness and view consistency. Our work can be put in this context with the aim to manage incompleteness and to check views conformance: we suppose to have state diagrams and scenarios models representing the system dynamics at the architectural level; they can be incomplete and we want to prove that they describe, from different viewpoints, the same system behavior. To reach this goal, we are using the SPIN model checker and we are implementing a tool to manage the translation of architectural models in Promela and LTL.