Model-checking Distributed Components: The Vercors Platform

This article presents a component verification platform called Vercors providing means to analyse the behaviour properties of applications built from distributed components. From the behavioural specification of primitive components, and from the architectural description of the composite components, our tools build models encoding the interactions between the components, suitable for analysis by model-checking tools. The models are hierarchical and parameterized, expressing in a compact way the system behaviour. Then we have tools for instantiating those parameterized models using finite abstractions, and producing input for state-of-the-art verification tools. Our current work also targets the generation of models that include controllers modelling the dynamic management of architectural transformation of an application, such as changes in bindings or replacement of sub-components. We describe the existing tools, give tracks for further developments and show how realistic case-studies can be model-checked using our platform.