Design and implementation of a Petri net based toolkit for Ada tasking analysis

The use of Petri nets for defining a general static analysis framework for Ada tasking is advocated. The framework has evolved into a collection of tools that have proven to be a very valuable platform for experimental research. The design and implementation of tools that make up the tasking-oriented toolkit for the Ada language (TOTAL) are defined and discussed. Modeling and query/analysis methods and tools are discussed. Example Ada tasking programs are used to demonstrate the utility of each tool individually as well as the way the tools integrate. TOTAL is divided into two major subsystems, the front-end translator subsystem (FETS) and the back-end information display subsystem (BIDS). Three component tools that make up FETS are defined. Examples demonstrate the way these tools integrate in order to perform the translation of Ada source to Petri-net format. The BIDS subsystem and, in particular, the use of tools and techniques to support user-directed, but transparent, searches of Ada-net reachability graphs are discussed