Abstract
Afra is an Eclipse-based tool for the modeling and model checking of Rebeca family models. Together with the standard enriched editor, easy to trace counter-example viewer, modular temporal property definition, exporting a model and its transition system to some other formats facilities are features of Afra. Rebeca family provides actor-based modeling languages which are designed to bridge the gap between formal methods and software engineering. Faithfulness to the system being modeled, and the usability of Rebeca family languages help in ease of modeling and analysis of the model, together with the synthesis of the system based on the model. In this paper, architectural decisions and design strategies we made in the development of Afra are presented. This makes Afra an extensible and reusable application for the modeling and analysis of Rebeca family models. Here, we show how different compilers can be developed for the family of languages which are the same in general language constructs but have some minor differences. Then we show how the model checking engine for these different languages is designed. Despite the fact that Afra has a layered object-oriented design and is developed in Java technology, we use C++ codes for developing its model checking for the performance purposes. This decision made the design of the application even harder.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Afra can be downloaded from http://rebeca-lang.org/alltools/Afra.
- 2.
This feature is excluded from the current release of Afra.
References
Agha, G.A.: ACTORS - A Model of Concurrent Computation in Distributed Systems. Artificial Intelligence, MIT Press, Cambridge (1990)
Hewitt, C.: Description and Theoretical Analysis (Using Schemata) of PLANNER: A Language for Proving Theorems and Manipulating Models in a Robot. MIT Artificial Intelligence Technical report 258, Department of Computer Science, MIT, April 1972
Sirjani, M., Jaghoori, M.M.: Ten years of analyzing actors: Rebeca experience. In: Formal Modeling: Actors, Open Systems, Biological Systems, pp. 20–56 (2011)
Jaghoori, M.M., Sirjani, M., Mousavi, M.R., Khamespanah, E., Movaghar, A.: Symmetry and partial order reduction techniques in model checking Rebeca. Acta Inf. 47(1), 33–66 (2010)
Sabouri, H., Sirjani, M.: Slicing-based reductions for Rebeca. Electr. Notes Theor. Comput. Sci. 260, 209–224 (2010)
Sirjani, M., de Boer, F.S., Movaghar-Rahimabadi, A.: Modular verification of a component-based actor language. J. UCS 11(10), 1695–1717 (2005)
Reynisson, A.H., et al.: Modelling and simulation of asynchronous real-time systems using timed Rebeca. Sci. Comput. Program. 89, 41–68 (2014)
Varshosaz, M., Khosravi, R.: Modeling and verification of probabilistic actor systems using pRebeca. In: Aoki, T., Taguchi, K. (eds.) ICFEM 2012. LNCS, vol. 7635, pp. 135–150. Springer, Heidelberg (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-34281-3_12
Jafari, A., Khamespanah, E., Sirjani, M., Hermanns, H.: Performance analysis of distributed and asynchronous systems using probabilistic timed actors. In: ECEASST 70 (2014)
Razavi, N., Behjati, R., Sabouri, H., Khamespanah, E., Shali, A., Sirjani, M.: Sysfier: Actor-based formal verification of systemc. ACM Trans. Embedded Comput. Syst. 10(2), 19:1–19:35 (2010)
Yousefi, B., Ghassemi, F., Khosravi, R.: Modeling and efficient verification of broadcasting actors. In: Dastani, M., Sirjani, M. (eds.) FSEN 2015. LNCS, vol. 9392, pp. 69–83. Springer, Cham (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24644-4_5
Yousefi, B., Ghassemi, F., Khosravi, R.: Modeling and efficient verification of wireless ad hoc networks. CoRR abs/1604.07179 (2016)
Parr, T.J., Quong, R.W.: ANTLR: a predicated-LL(k) parser generator. Softw. Pract. Exp. 25(7), 789–810 (1995)
Holzmann, G.J.: The model checker SPIN. IEEE Trans. Softw. Eng. 23(5), 279–295 (1997)
Sirjani, M., Movaghar, A., Shali, A., de Boer, F.S.: Modeling and verification of reactive systems using Rebeca. Fundam. Inform. 63(4), 385–410 (2004)
Jafari, A., Khamespanah, E., Sirjani, M., Hermanns, H., Cimini, M.: PTRebeca: modeling and analysis of distributed and asynchronous systems. Sci. Comput. Program. 128, 22–50 (2016)
Jaghoori, M.M., Movaghar, A., Sirjani, M.: Modere: the model-checking engine of Rebeca. In: Haddad, H. (ed.) Proceedings of the 2006 ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC), Dijon, France, April 23–27, 2006, pp. 1810–1815. ACM (2006)
Visser, W., Havelund, K., Brat, G.P., Park, S., Lerda, F.: Model checking programs. Autom. Softw. Eng. 10(2), 203–232 (2003)
Khamespanah, E., Sirjani, M., Viswanathan, M., Khosravi, R.: Floating time transition system: more efficient analysis of timed actors. In: Braga, C., Ölveczky, P.C. (eds.) FACS 2015. LNCS, vol. 9539, pp. 237–255. Springer, Cham (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28934-2_13
Khamespanah, E., Sirjani, M., Sabahi-Kaviani, Z., Khosravi, R., Izadi, M.: Timed Rebeca schedulability and deadlock freedom analysis using bounded floating time transition system. Sci. Comput. Program. 98, 184–204 (2015)
Acknowledgments
The work on this paper has been supported in part by the project “Self-Adaptive Actors: SEADA” (nr. 163205-051) of the Icelandic Research Fund.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
A Graphical User Interface of Afra
A Graphical User Interface of Afra
An overview of Afra user interface is depicted in Fig. 7. Afra user interface consists five main sections which are, projects browser, model and property editor, model-checking result view, and counter example and its details views. The demo of how to work with the toolset is available from the address http://rebeca-lang.org/assets/tools/Afra/Afra-3.0-Demo.mov.
Afra graphical user interface
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing
About this paper
Cite this paper
Khamespanah, E., Sirjani, M., Khosravi, R. (2023). Afra: An Eclipse-Based Tool with Extensible Architecture for Modeling and Model Checking of Rebeca Family Models. In: Hojjat, H., Ábrahám, E. (eds) Fundamentals of Software Engineering. FSEN 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14155 . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-42441-0_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-42441-0_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-42440-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-42441-0
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)
