A property-based abstraction framework for SysML activity diagrams

SysML activity diagrams are OMG/INCOSE standards used for modeling, analyzing and specifying probabilistic systems. Since they are considered as a de facto systems' modeling language, it is of a major importance to verify these diagrams. Moreover, it is even more important to reduce the cost of their verification process. In this paper, we propose a probabilistic abstraction framework to efficiently verify SysML activity diagrams. It is based on reducing the diagram complexity with respect to a system requirement. For verification, we use our verification approach that relies on PRISM model checker. To ensure the correctness of our proposed approach, we prove its soundness. This is achieved by finding the adequate pre-order relation between the semantics of the abstract and the concrete diagrams. This relation is shown to preserve the satisfaction of systems requirements. To this end, a calculus to capture the underlying semantics of SysML activity diagrams is proposed. Finally, the effectiveness of our approach is demonstrated on two real systems. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.