Tree Automata In Modelling And Verification Of Concurrent Programs

formal verification, regular model checking, automated abstraction

We consider the problem of automated formal verification of modernconcurrent software systems. Dealing with such systems, which involveshandling unbounded dynamic instantiation, recursion, etc., naturallyleads to a need of dealing with infinite state spaces. We supposestates of such systems to be viewed as terms with a tree structure andin the future, we would like to use the regular tree model checkingmethod for dealing with infinite sets of states. Infinite sets ofstates are to be finitely described by tree automata and theirtransformations by tree transducers. To facilitate the termination ofthe method, we intend to use a generalization of the abstract regularmodel checking method proposed for linear words. In the paper, wediscuss the starting points of our work, the problems to be solved, andbriefly sketch our first preliminary steps in the area---namely stepsleading to a library for handling tree automata and transducers to beused as a basis for our future verification tool.