What are the benefits of using Quasar ?

Quasar is able to cover most of the concurrency features and a large part of a language like Ada. It shows good performances when analyzing the concurrency part of non-trivial application programs. This reflects the fact that, although intrinsically more complex, unfamiliar and prone to errors than most other aspects of programming, the part of an application program which is concerned by concurrency remains hopefully small. The slicing step of Quasar (the first step) eliminates this large part of the application program which is not concerned with concurrency. And moreover the efficiency of the reduction techniques and state verification methods of the third step of Quasar succeeds in restraining the combinatorial explosion of states.

For applications which specification includes a high degree of safety, the use of Quasar permits to avoid to set up complex and cumbersome specification or test methods which must be iterative whereas each little change in the original code source can induce a huge difference in the application behavior. Using Quasar allows to analyze applications that have already been implemented but that have never been validated, avoiding to elaborate a posteriori the specifications of the application. Furthermore, combining the use of Quasar with specification and test methods will result in a higher level of safety as in fact these approaches provide complementary insights.

last update : 20/10/2005