Model Checking Graphical User Interfaces

Symbolic model checking techniques have been widely and successfully applied to statically analyze dynamic properties of hardware systems. Efforts to apply this same technology to the analysis of software systems has met with a number of obstacles, such as the existence of non-nite state-spaces. This paper investigates abstractions that make it possible to cost-eeectively model check speciications of software for graphical user interface (GUI) systems. We identify useful abstractions for this domain and demonstrate that they can be incorporated into the analysis of a variety of systems with similar structural characteristics. The resulting domain-speciic model checking yields fast veriication of naturally occurring speciications of intended GUI behavior.