An integrated method for effective behaviour analysis of distributed systems

Behavioural analysis is a valuable aid for the design and maintenance of well-behaved distributed systems. Dataflow and reachability analyses are two orthogonal, but complementary, behavioural analysis techniques. Individually, each of these techniques may be inadequate for the analysis of large-scale distributed systems. On the one hand, dataflow analysis algorithms, while tractable, may not be sufficiently accurate to provide meaningful detection of errors. On the other hand, reachability analysis, while providing exhaustive analysis, may be computationally too expensive for complex systems. In this paper, we present a method which integrates dataflow and reachability analysis techniques to provide a flexible and effective means for analysing distributed systems at the preliminary and final design stages respectively. We also describe some effective measures taken to improve the adequacy of the individual analysis techniques using the concepts of action dependency and context constraints. A prototype supporting the method has been built, and its performance is described in this paper. A realistic example of a distributed track control system is used as a case study