Formal verification of dependable distributed protocols

Dependable distributed systems often employ a hierarchy of protocols to provide timely and reliable services. Such protocols have both dependability and real-time attributes, and the verification of such composite services is a problem of growing complexity even when using formal approaches. Our intention in this paper is to exploit the modular design aspects appearing in most dependable distributed protocols to provide formal level of assurance for their correctness. We highlight the capability of our approach through a case study in formal modular specification and tool-assisted verification of a timestamp-based checkpointing protocol. Furthermore, during the process of verification, insights gained in such a stack of protocols have assisted in validating some additional properties those dealing with failure recovery. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.