A methodology for verification and analysis of parallel and distributed systems requirements specifications

Performing rigorous analysis of parallel and distributed systems (PDS) specifications is one of the important tasks during the early stages of development. The ambiguities and errors left unchecked during the analysis phase can creep into design and development phases, resulting in cost and schedule overruns and a less reliable end product. Commercial off the shelf CASE (Computer Aided Software Engineering) tools can play an important role in the analysis and design phases. However techniques must be developed to address the shortcomings of CASE tools. A set of such techniques is presented in this paper. CASE tools can be used to gather PDS specifications in the form of analysis models. The techniques presented in this paper deal with the problem of performing rigorous analysis of PDS specifications originally developed using a CASE tool. The approach is based on integrating a CASE tool with a verification tool based on coloured Petri nets (CPNs). CPNs can be used to model and analyze concurrency in specifications and design phases. Dynamic simulations of CPN models can be used to conduct performance/performability analysis as well as risk assessment studies