Abstract

Explicit model checking algorithms explore the full state space of a system. State spaces are usually treated as directed graphs without any specific features. We gather a large collection of state spaces and extensively study their structural properties. Our results show that state spaces have several typical properties, i.e., they are not arbitrary graphs. We also demonstrate that state spaces differ significantly from random graphs and that different classes of models (application domains, academic vs industrial) have different properties. We discuss consequences of these results for model checking experiments and we point out how to exploit typical properties of state spaces in practical model checking algorithms.

Citations