Model Generation for Legacy Systems

We propose the use of (semi-) automatically extrapolated models as a means for coping with legacy systems: a focused way of testing systems for their behavioral properties allows the construction of expressive behavioral hypothesis models, and therefore extends the range of formal methods to ‘black box’ scenarios, which are dominant in industrial practice. Keeping these models up to date by continuous adaptation may provide an ideal way for controlling the evolution of large systems during their whole life cycles. Bottleneck of this approach is the size of the extrapolated models: particularly for distributed systems the state explosion problem strikes back. This paper focusses on a particularly promising cure: view-oriented model construction allows a new way of size control that complements other powerful techniques, which together have the potential to scale to systems of realistic size. This is illustrated by considering small instance views in the context of Computer Telephony Integrated Systems.

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