A Comparison of Three Model Checkers Applied to a Distributed Database Problem

Increasingly model checking is being applied to more abstract problem domains than the tradi tional protocol analysis The extent to which such an approach is able to provide useful insight into the problem domain depends to a large de gree on the nature of the tool used This paper reports the results of a study using three di erent model checkers which di er widely in their spec i cation language internal implementation and facilities for specifying correctness properties An abstract model of an industrial distributed database application has been studied using the three tools A detailed model of the application using each of the tools is presented and the ex tent to which each tool allows us to investigate interesting properties of the problem domain is compared Some conclusions are drawn regard ing the usefulness of model checking at an ab stract level and the importance of selecting a tool appropriate to the nature of the problem