A Protocol Specification Language with a High-Level Petri Net Semantics

This paper deals with two important aspects of communicat ion protocols namely specificationnand verification.We present a new variant of the Formal Description Techni que Estelle called SSL which has the semantics of a High-level Petri net model. Such a semantics enables to apply efficient proof methods in order to automatically verify communication prot ocol properties. SSL is mainly characterized by a total genericity concept which misses in Estelle. We show that this speci fication feature has a direct effect on the efficiency of the ver ification methods, For instance, the SSL genericity feature implies a symmetrical behaviour of the corresponding Petri net. These behaviour symmetries allow the building of reducedd state graphs called symbolic graphs. Moreover, SSL introduces some additional features of communication prot ocols as an object-based approach and high-level communication primitives. The major interest of SSL is to combine the advantages of a good specification language such Estelle with the analysis powe r of Petri nets.