In this paper we present an approach to model concurrent systems specified in a temporal concurrent constraint language. Our goal is to construct a framework in which it is possible to apply the Model Checking technique to programs specified in such language.
This work is the first step to the framework construction. We present a formalism to transform a specification into a tcc Structure. This structure is a graph representation of the program behavior.
Our basic tool is the Timed Concurrent Constraint Programming (tcc) framework defined by Saraswat et al. to describe reactive systems. With this language we take advantage of both the natural properties of the declarative paradigm and of the fact that the notion of time is built into the semantics of the programming language. In fact, on this ground it becomes reasonable to introduce the idea of applying the technique of Model Checking to a finite time interval (introduced by the user). With this restriction we naturally force the space representing the behavior of the program to be finite and hence Model Checking algorithms to be applicable. The graph construction is a completely automatic process that takes as input the tcc specification.