Special section on tools and algorithms for the construction and analysis of systems Preface by the section editor

Preliminary versions of the papers of this spe- cial section originally appeared in the proceedings of the 6th edition of the conference "Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems" (Tacas )h eld in Berlin early April 2000 as a constituent event of the European joint conferences on Theory and Practice of Software. All papers present tools relevant in the context of systems validation. The first three focus on extensions or particular applications of model-checking techniques, whereas the fourth is about integration of design tools with validation tools, in particular theorem provers and model-checkers.

[1]  Gerard J. Holzmann,et al.  The Model Checker SPIN , 1997, IEEE Trans. Software Eng..

[2]  Robert K. Brayton,et al.  Model-checking continuous-time Markov chains , 2000, TOCL.

[3]  Itu-T.  Specification and Description Language (SDL) , 1999 .

[4]  Laurent Mounier,et al.  Compositional State Space Generation with Partial Order Reductions for Asynchronous Communicating Systems , 2000, TACAS.

[5]  Rajeev Alur,et al.  Model-Checking for Probabilistic Real-Time Systems (Extended Abstract) , 1991, ICALP.

[6]  Holger Hermanns,et al.  A tool for model-checking Markov chains , 2003, International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer.

[7]  Marius Bozga,et al.  IF: An Intermediate Representation and Validation Environment for Timed Asynchronous Systems , 1999, World Congress on Formal Methods.

[8]  Marius Bozga,et al.  Using static analysis to improve automatic test generation , 2003, International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer.

[9]  Vitaly Shmatikov,et al.  Efficient finite-state analysis for large security protocols , 1998, Proceedings. 11th IEEE Computer Security Foundations Workshop (Cat. No.98TB100238).

[10]  Tiziana Margaria,et al.  The Electronic Tool Integration platform: concepts and design , 1997, International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer.

[11]  Thierry Jéron,et al.  An Experiment in Automatic Generation of Test Suites for Protocols with Verification Technology , 1997, Sci. Comput. Program..

[12]  Somesh Jha,et al.  Efficient verification of security protocols using partial-order reductions , 2003, International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer.

[13]  Richard J. Boulton,et al.  The PROSPER Toolkit , 2000, TACAS.

[14]  Marius Bozga,et al.  IF: A Validation Environment for Timed Asynchronous Systems , 2000, CAV.