Promela
verification modeling language
PROMELA (Process or Protocol Meta Language) is a verification modeling language introduced by Gerard J. Holzmann. The language allows for the dynamic creation of concurrent processes to model, for example, distributed systems. In PROMELA models, communication via message channels can be defined to be synchronous (i.e., rendezvous), or asynchronous (i.e., buffered). PROMELA models can be analyzed with the SPIN model checker, to verify that the modeled system produces the desired behavior. An implementation verified with Isabelle/HOL is also available, as part of the Computer Aided Verification of Automata (CAVA) project. Files written in Promela traditionally have a .pml file extension.
Introduction
PROMELA is a process-modeling language whose intended use is to verify the logic of parallel systems. Given a program in PROMELA, Spin can verify the model for correctness by performing random or iterative simulations of the modeled system's execution, or it can generate a C program that performs a fast exhaustive verification of the system state space. During simulations and verifications, SPIN checks for the absence of deadlocks, unspecified receptions, and unexecutable code. The verifier can also be used to prove the correctness of system invariants and it can find non-progress execution cycles.
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This entry incorporates text from “Promela” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.