Automated formal analysis and verification: an overview

formal analysis and verification; model checking; state space explosion; theorem proving; static analysis

This paper provides an overview of various existing approaches to automated formal analysis and verification. The most space is devoted to the approach of model checking, including its basic principles as well as the different techniques that have been proposed for dealing with the state space explosion problem in model checking. This paper, however, includes a brief discussion of theorem proving and static analysis too. All of the discussed approaches are introduced mostly on an informal level, with an attempt to provide the reader with their basic ideas and references to works where more details can be found.