Affiliations: Centre Universitaire d'Informatique, Université de Genève, Route de Drize 7, CH-1227 Carouge, Switzerland. steve.hostettler@unige.ch; alexis.marechal@unige.ch; alban.linard@unige.ch; matteo.risoldi@unige.ch; didier.buchs@unige.ch;
Note: [] This work was partially supported by the COMEDIA project funded by the Hasler foundation, project #2107. Address for correspondence: Route de Drize 7, CH-1227 Carouge, Switzerland
Note: [] This work was partially supported by the COMEDIA project funded by the Hasler foundation, project #2107.
Note: [] This work was partially supported by the BRINTA project funded by the Fonds National Suisse de la Recherche Scientifique, #200021-130159.
Abstract: Although model checking is heavily used in the hardware domain, it did not take off in software engineering yet. One of the possible reasons is that software models are very complex. They integrate many dimensions such as data types and concurrency, leading to the infamous state space explosion problem. This article introduces the Algebraic Petri Nets Analyzer (AlPiNA), a symbolic model checker for High-level Petri nets. It is comprised of two independent modules: a GUI plug-in for Eclipse and an underlying model checking engine. AlPiNA is a step towards performing efficient and user-friendly model checking of large software systems. This is achieved by separating the model and its properties from the optimisation artifacts. This article describes the features that AlPiNA provides to the user for designing models and verifying properties. It also presents the techniques and artifacts used for tuning verification performance, along with some theoretical background.
Keywords: System design and verification, Higher-level Nets Models, Algebraic Petri Nets, State Space Generation, Computer Tools for Nets, Model Checking
