Ensuring the satisfaction of a temporal specification at run-time

A responsive computing system is a hybrid of real-time, distributed and fault-tolerant systems. In such a system, severe consequences can occur if the run-time behavior does not conform to the expected behavior or specifications. In this paper, we present a formal approach to ensure satisfaction of the specifications in the operational environment as follows. First we specify behavior of the systems using Interval Temporal Logic (ITL). Next we give algorithms for trace checking of programs in such systems. Finally, we present a fully distributed run-time evaluation system which causally orders the events of the system during its execution and checks this run-time behavior against its ITL specification. The approach is illustrated using a train-set example