Formal Methods for Specifying Systems (DAT912)
The course covers advanced topics in formal methods for specifying system designs, model checking, and proving safety and liveness properties.
Course description for study year 2024-2025. Please note that changes may occur.
Course code
DAT912
Version
1
Credits (ECTS)
10
Semester tution start
Spring, Autumn
Number of semesters
1
Language of instruction
English
Content
The course covers advanced topics in formal methods for specifying systems, emphasizing languages and tools for model checking and proving the safety, liveness, and temporal properties of system designs and specifications.
We introduce these formal methods with basic examples before we move on to our main target: advanced distributed system protocols such as voting, distributed transaction commit, distributed consensus (Paxos), state machine replication, and Byzantine fault tolerant protocols. We apply a model checker and a proof system to verify a system's safety and temporal properties.
Learning outcome
Knowledge
- Be familiar with the general principles of formal methods for specifying systems.
- Be familiar with the mathematics and formalism needed to specify a system design formally.
- Be familiar with techniques required to limit the state-space explosion problem.
- Be familiar with techniques for specifying safety and liveness properties and how to prove a system design adheres to the given properties using a model checker and proof system.
Skills
- Be able to develop advanced distributed system designs with fault tolerance properties.
- Be able to modularize and refine system specifications.
- Be able to machine-check and prove interesting properties of a system's design.
General competency
- Know how to specify and prove or model check properties of advanced distributed computer systems.
Required prerequisite knowledge
Exam
Form of assessment | Weight | Duration | Marks | Aid |
---|---|---|---|---|
Project | 1/1 | Passed / Not Passed |
The group project report will be evaluated with pass/fail. All group members must contribute equally to all aspects of the report and development of specifications, models, etc. Each group member can receive a different result based on their performance during an oral examination.
Coursework requirements
Exercises are mandatory and must be presented during the weekly meetings.
A final group project must also be completed based on a specific system design that will be decided jointly with the students. The project should be completed in the chosen modeling language and tool, and corresponding model checking and proof system results should be documented in a final report. The model source files and dependencies should be submitted separately and as part of the report, e.g., as an appendix.
Course teacher(s)
Course teacher:
Leander Nikolaus JehlCourse coordinator:
Hein MelingHead of Department:
Tom RyenMethod of work
We meet weekly for 4 hours and discuss selected exercises from the course material. Each student walks through their solution. Later in the course, the group will specify a selected system and prove its safety and liveness properties.
The course is only given on demand. The working method may deviate in the case of meager student numbers.