EDBT 2026 Demo / reviewers in the wild / expert
Étienne André 0001
dblp:49/2992
· DBLP profile ↗
74ranked-venue papers
53as first author
29since 2021 · last 2026
0000-0001-8473-9555ORCID · verified
Domains — the database's venue-derived domains; a paper can count in several
Software engineering, systems software and programming languages · 46 · 31 first-author · 13 since 2021Theory of computation · 25 · 21 first-author · 13 since 2021Computer networks · 4 · 2 first-author · 2 since 2021Systems, architecture and hardware · 3 · 2 first-author · 1 since 2021Artificial intelligence and machine learning · 2 · 1 first-authorDatabases, data management, data science and information retrieval · 2 · 1 first-authorApplied, interdisciplinary, general and emerging computing · 2 · 1 since 2021
| Year | Publication | Venue | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | Buffered Control for Opacity in Timed AutomataabstractTimed automata are an extension of finite automata that can measure and react to the passage of time, handling real-time constraints by using clocks. The timed opacity problem, where an attacker attempts to infer from observed actions and timestamps whether a secret location was visited, was shown undecidable for timed automata. Execution-time opacity is a decidable though limited setting in which the attacker attempts to detect whether the secret location was visited, by only relying on the run duration. Here, we significantly extend this setting, by allowing the attacker to observe all observable actions, in the right order though with only the integral parts of their timestamps, which we call buffered observations. We consider the controlled setting, in which we aim at dynamically defining a sequence of sets of enabled actions ensuring opacity with buffered observations. We first prove the inter-reducibility of full opacity (observations must not leak the visit of the secret location) and weak opacity (the attacker might prove that the location was not visited, but not that it was visited) in this new controlled setting. Then, we prove the undecidability of the problem of existence of a sequential control strategy ensuring opacity under buffered observations. Finally and most importantly, we prove that decidability is retrieved in two independent cases, with their theoretical complexities, with and without control. These two assumptions express realistic limitations of the controller. The first case is when the strategy of the controller changes at most an a priori fixed number of times per time unit, which is not a strong practical assumption. The second case is when all controllable actions are observable and distinguishable by an attacker. Étienne André 0001, Sarah Dépernet, Engel Lefaucheux |
CONCUR | 1 |
| 2026 | Parametric Disjunctive Timed Networks
Étienne André 0001, Swen Jacobs, Engel Lefaucheux |
CSL | 1 |
| 2026 | The Bright Side of Timed OpacityabstractTimed automata (TAs) are an extension of finite automata that can measure and react to the passage of time, providing the ability to handle real-time constraints using clocks. In 2009, Franck Cassez showed that the timed opacity problem, where an attacker can observe some actions with their timestamps and attempts to deduce information, is undecidable for TAs. Moreover, he showed that the undecidability holds even for subclasses such as event-recording automata. In this article, we consider the same definition of opacity, by restricting either the system or the attacker. Our first contribution is to prove the inter-reducibility of two variants of opacity: full opacity (for which the observations should be the same regardless of the visit of a private location) and weak opacity (for which it suffices that the attacker cannot deduce whether the private location was visited, but for which it is harmless to deduce that it was not visited); we also prove further results including a connection with timed language inclusion. Our second contribution is to study opacity for several subclasses of TAs: with restrictions on the number of clocks, the number of actions, the nature of time, or a new subclass called observable event-recording automata. We show that opacity is mostly decidable in these cases, except for one-action TAs and for one-clock TAs with $ε$-transitions, for which undecidability remains. Our third (and arguably main) contribution is to propose a new definition of opacity in which the number of observations made by the attacker is limited to the first $N$ observations, or to a set of $N$ timestamps after which the attacker observes the first action that follows immediately. This set can be defined either a priori or at runtime; all three versions yield decidability for the whole TA class. Étienne André 0001, Sarah Dépernet, Engel Lefaucheux |
Log. Methods Comput. Sci. | 1 |
| 2026 | Dense Integer-Complete Synthesis for Bounded Parametric Timed AutomataabstractEnsuring the correctness of critical real-time systems, involving concurrent behaviours and timing requirements, is crucial. Timed automata extend finite-state automata with clocks, compared in guards and invariants with integer constants. Parametric timed automata (PTAs) extend timed automata with timing parameters. Parameter synthesis aims at computing dense sets of valuations for the timing parameters, guaranteeing a good behaviour. However, in most cases, the emptiness problem for reachability (i.e., the emptiness of the parameter valuations set for which some location is reachable) is undecidable for PTAs and, as a consequence, synthesis procedures do not terminate in general, even for bounded parameters. In this paper, we introduce a parametric extrapolation, that allows us to derive an underapproximation in the form of symbolic sets of valuations containing not only all the integer points ensuring reachability, but also all the (non-necessarily integer) convex combinations of these integer points, for general PTAs with a bounded parameter domain. We also propose two further algorithms synthesizing parameter valuations guaranteeing unavoidability, and preservation of the untimed behaviour w.r.t. a reference parameter valuation, respectively. Our algorithms terminate and can output sets of valuations arbitrarily close to the complete result. We demonstrate their applicability and efficiency using the tools Roméo and IMITATOR on several benchmarks. Étienne André 0001, Didier Lime, Olivier H. Roux |
Log. Methods Comput. Sci. | 1 |
| 2025 | Probabilistic Safety Verification of Distributed Systems: A Statistical Approach for Monitoring
Bineet Ghosh, Étienne André 0001 |
FORTE | 2 |
| 2025 | Parameterized Verification of Timed Networks with Clock InvariantsabstractWe consider parameterized verification problems for networks of timed automata (TAs) based on different communication primitives. To this end, we first consider disjunctive timed networks (DTNs), i.e., networks of TAs that communicate via location guards that enable a transition only if there is another process in a certain location. We solve for the first time the case with unrestricted clock invariants, and establish that the parameterized model checking problem (PMCP) over finite local traces can be reduced to the corresponding model checking problem on a single TA. Moreover, we prove that the PMCP for networks that communicate via lossy broadcast can be reduced to the PMCP for DTNs. Finally, we show that for networks with k-wise synchronization, and therefore also for timed Petri nets, location reachability can be reduced to location reachability in DTNs. As a consequence we can answer positively the open problem from Abdulla et al. (2018) whether the universal safety problem for timed Petri nets with multiple clocks is decidable. Étienne André 0001, Swen Jacobs, Shyam Lal Karra, Ocan Sankur |
FSTTCS | 1 |
| 2025 | Hyper Pattern Matching
Masaki Waga, Étienne André 0001 |
RV | 2 |
| 2024 | CosyVerif: The Path to Formalisms Cohabitation
Étienne André 0001, Jaime Arias 0001, Benoît Barbot, Francis Hulin-Hubard, Fabrice Kordon, Van-François Le, Laure Petrucci |
Petri Nets | 1 |
| 2024 | Execution-Time Opacity Problems in One-Clock Parametric Timed AutomataabstractParametric timed automata (PTAs) extend the concept of timed automata, by allowing timing delays not only specified by concrete values but also by parameters, allowing the analysis of systems with uncertainty regarding timing behaviors. The full execution-time opacity is defined as the problem in which an attacker must never be able to deduce whether some private location was visited, by only observing the execution time. The problem of full ET-opacity emptiness (i.e., the emptiness over the parameter valuations for which full execution-time opacity is satisfied) is known to be undecidable for general PTAs. We therefore focus here on one-clock PTAs with integer-valued parameters over dense time. We show that the full ET-opacity emptiness is undecidable for a sufficiently large number of parameters, but is decidable for a single parameter, and exact synthesis can be effectively achieved. Our proofs rely on a novel construction as well as on variants of Presburger arithmetics. We finally prove an additional decidability result on an existential variant of execution-time opacity. Étienne André 0001, Johan Arcile, Engel Lefaucheux |
FSTTCS | 1 |
| 2024 | Tuning Trains Speed in Railway Scheduling
Étienne André 0001 |
ICFEM | 1 |
| 2024 | The Bright Side of Timed Opacity
Étienne André 0001, Sarah Dépernet, Engel Lefaucheux |
ICFEM | 1 |
| 2024 | Execution-Time Opacity Control for Timed Automata
Étienne André 0001, Marie Duflot, Laetitia Laversa, Engel Lefaucheux |
SEFM | 1 |
| 2024 | Parameterized Verification of Disjunctive Timed Networks
Étienne André 0001, Paul Eichler 0001, Swen Jacobs, Shyam Lal Karra |
VMCAI (1) | 1 |
| 2024 | Offline and online energy-efficient monitoring of scattered uncertain logs using a bounding modelabstractMonitoring the correctness of distributed cyber-physical systems is essential. Detecting possible safety violations can be hard when some samples are uncertain or missing. We monitor here black-box cyber-physical system, with logs being uncertain both in the state and timestamp dimensions: that is, not only the logged value is known with some uncertainty, but the time at which the log was made is uncertain too. In addition, we make use of an over-approximated yet expressive model, given by a non-linear extension of dynamical systems. Given an offline log, our approach is able to monitor the log against safety specifications with a limited number of false alarms. As a second contribution, we show that our approach can be used online to minimize the number of sample triggers, with the aim at energetic efficiency. We apply our approach to three benchmarks, an anesthesia model, an adaptive cruise controller and an aircraft orbiting system. Bineet Ghosh, Étienne André 0001 |
Log. Methods Comput. Sci. | 2 |
| 2024 | Hyper Parametric Timed CTLabstractHyperproperties enable simultaneous reasoning about multiple execution traces of a system and are useful to reason about noninterference, opacity, robustness, fairness, observational determinism, etc. We introduce hyper parametric timed computation tree logic (HyperPTCTL), extending hyperlogics with timing reasoning and, notably, parameters to express unknown values. We mainly consider its nest-free fragment, where the temporal operators cannot be nested. However, we allow extensions that enable counting actions and comparing the duration since the most recent occurrence of specific actions. We show that our nest-free fragment with this extension is sufficiently expressive to encode the properties, e.g., opacity, (un)fairness, or robust observational (non)determinism. We propose semi-algorithms for the model checking and synthesis of parametric timed automata (TAs) (an extension of TAs with timing parameters) against this nest-free fragment with the extension via reduction to the PTCTL model checking and synthesis. While the general model checking (and thus synthesis) problem is undecidable, we show that a large part of our extended (yet nest-free) fragment is decidable, provided the parameters only appear in the property, not in the model. We also exhibit additional decidable fragments where the parameters within the model are allowed. We implemented our semi-algorithms on the top of the IMITATOR model checker and performed experiments. Our implementation supports most of the nest-free fragments (beyond the decidable classes). The experimental results highlight our method’s practical relevance. Masaki Waga, Étienne André 0001 |
IEEE Trans. Comput. Aided Des. Integr. Circuits Syst. | 2 |
| 2023 | From FMTV to WATERS: Lessons Learned from the First Verification Challenge at ECRTS (Invited Paper)abstractWe present here the main features and lessons learned from the first edition of what has now become the ECRTS industrial challenge, together with the final description of the challenge and a comparative overview of the proposed solutions. This verification challenge, proposed by Thales, was first discussed in 2014 as part of a dedicated workshop (FMTV, a satellite event of the FM 2014 conference), and solutions were discussed for the first time at the WATERS 2015 workshop. The use case for the verification challenge is an aerial video tracking system. A specificity of this system lies in the fact that periods are constant but known with a limited precision only. The first part of the challenge focuses on the video frame processing system. It consists in computing maximum values of the end-to-end latency of the frames sent by the camera to the display, for two different buffer sizes, and then the minimum duration between two consecutive frame losses. The second challenge is about computing end-to-end latencies on the tracking and camera control for two different values of jitter. Solutions based on five different tools - Fiacre/Tina, CPAL (simulation and analysis), IMITATOR, UPPAAL and MAST - were submitted for discussion at WATERS 2015. While none of these solutions provided a full answer to the challenge, a combination of several of them did allow to draw some conclusions. Sebastian Altmeyer, Étienne André 0001, Silvano Dal-Zilio, Loïc Fejoz, Michael González Harbour, Susanne Graf, J. Javier Gutiérrez, Rafik Henia, Didier Le Botlan, Giuseppe Lipari, Julio L. Medina, Nicolas Navet, Sophie Quinton, Juan Maria Rivas, Youcheng Sun |
ECRTS | 2 |
| 2023 | Expiring opacity problems in parametric timed automataabstractInformation leakage can have dramatic consequences on the security of real-time systems. Timing leaks occur when an attacker is able to infer private behavior depending on timing information. In this work, we propose a definition of expiring timed opacity w.r.t. execution time, where a system is opaque whenever the attacker is unable to deduce the reachability of some private state solely based on the execution time; in addition, the secrecy is violated only when the private state was entered "recently", i.e., within a given time bound (or expiration date) prior to system completion. This has an interesting parallel with concrete applications, notably cache deducibility: it may be useless for the attacker to know the cache content too late after its observance. We study here expiring timed opacity problems in timed automata. We consider the set of time bounds (or expiration dates) for which a system is opaque and show when they can be effectively computed for timed automata. We then study the decidability of several parameterized problems, when not only the bounds, but also some internal timing constants become timing parameters of unknown constant values. Étienne André 0001, Engel Lefaucheux, Dylan Marinho |
ICECCS | 1 |
| 2023 | MoULDyS: Monitoring of autonomous systems in the presence of uncertainties
Bineet Ghosh, Étienne André 0001 |
Sci. Comput. Program. | 2 |
| 2023 | Parametric Timed Pattern MatchingabstractGiven a log and a specification, timed pattern matching aims at exhibiting for which start and end dates a specification holds on that log. For example, “a given action is always followed by another action before a given deadline”. This problem has strong connections with monitoring real-time systems. We address here timed pattern matching in the presence of an uncertain specification, i.e., that may contain timing parameters (e.g., the deadline can be uncertain or unknown). We want to know for which start and end dates, and for what values of the timing parameters, a property holds. For instance, we look for the minimum or maximum deadline (together with the corresponding start and end dates) for which the property holds. We propose two frameworks for parametric timed pattern matching. The first one is based on parametric timed model checking. In contrast to most parametric timed problems, the solution is effectively computable. The second one is a dedicated method; not only we largely improve the efficiency compared to the first method, but we further propose optimizations with skipping. Our experiment results suggest that our algorithms, especially the second one, are efficient and practically relevant. Masaki Waga, Étienne André 0001, Ichiro Hasuo |
ACM Trans. Softw. Eng. Methodol. | 2 |
| 2022 | Offline and Online Monitoring of Scattered Uncertain Logs Using Uncertain Linear Dynamical Systems
Bineet Ghosh, Étienne André 0001 |
FORTE | 2 |
| 2022 | Reachability and liveness in parametric timed automataabstractWe study timed systems in which some timing features are unknown parameters. Parametric timed automata (PTAs) are a classical formalism for such systems but for which most interesting problems are undecidable. Notably, the parametric reachability emptiness problem, i.e., the emptiness of the parameter valuations set allowing to reach some given discrete state, is undecidable. Lower-bound/upper-bound parametric timed automata (L/U-PTAs) achieve decidability for reachability properties by enforcing a separation of parameters used as upper bounds in the automaton constraints, and those used as lower bounds. In this paper, we first study reachability. We exhibit a subclass of PTAs (namely integer-points PTAs) with bounded rational-valued parameters for which the parametric reachability emptiness problem is decidable. Using this class, we present further results improving the boundary between decidability and undecidability for PTAs and their subclasses such as L/U-PTAs. We then study liveness. We prove that: (1) deciding the existence of at least one parameter valuation for which there exists an infinite run in an L/U-PTA is PSpace-complete; (2) the existence of a parameter valuation such that the system has a deadlock is however undecidable; (3) the problem of the existence of a valuation for which a run remains in a given set of locations exhibits a very thin border between decidability and undecidability. Étienne André 0001, Didier Lime, Olivier H. Roux |
Log. Methods Comput. Sci. | 1 |
| 2022 | Model-bounded Monitoring of Hybrid SystemsabstractMonitoring of hybrid systems attracts both scientific and practical attention. However, monitoring algorithms suffer from the methodological difficulty of only observing sampled discrete-time signals, while real behaviors are continuous-time signals. To mitigate this problem of sampling uncertainties, we introduce a model-bounded monitoring scheme, where we use prior knowledge about the target system to prune interpolation candidates. Technically, we express such prior knowledge by linear hybrid automata (LHAs)—the LHAs are called bounding models . We introduce a novel notion of monitored language of LHAs, and we reduce the monitoring problem to the membership problem of the monitored language. We present two partial algorithms—one is via reduction to reachability in LHAs and the other is a direct one using polyhedra—and show that these methods, and thus the proposed model-bounded monitoring scheme, are efficient and practically relevant. Masaki Waga, Étienne André 0001, Ichiro Hasuo |
ACM Trans. Cyber Phys. Syst. | 2 |
| 2022 | Guaranteeing Timed Opacity using Parametric Timed Model CheckingabstractInformation leakage can have dramatic consequences on systems security. Among harmful information leaks, the timing information leakage occurs whenever an attacker successfully deduces confidential internal information. In this work, we consider that the attacker has access (only) to the system execution time. We address the following timed opacity problem: given a timed system, a private location and a final location, synthesize the execution times from the initial location to the final location for which one cannot deduce whether the system went through the private location. We also consider the full timed opacity problem, asking whether the system is opaque for all execution times. We show that these problems are decidable for timed automata (TAs) but become undecidable when one adds parameters, yielding parametric timed automata (PTAs). We identify a subclass with some decidability results. We then devise an algorithm for synthesizing PTAs parameter valuations guaranteeing that the resulting TA is opaque. We finally show that our method can also apply to program analysis. Étienne André 0001, Didier Lime, Dylan Marinho, Jun Sun 0001 |
ACM Trans. Softw. Eng. Methodol. | 1 |
| 2021 | IMITATOR 3: Synthesis of Timing Parameters Beyond DecidabilityabstractAbstract Real-time systems are notoriously hard to verify due to nondeterminism, concurrency and timing constraints. When timing constants are uncertain (in early the design phase, or due to slight variations of the timing bounds), timed model checking techniques may not be satisfactory. In contrast, parametric timed model checking synthesizes timing values ensuring correctness. takes as input an extension of parametric timed automata (PTAs), a powerful formalism to formally verify critical real-time systems. extends PTAs with multi-rate clocks, global rational-valued variables and a set of additional useful features. We describe here the new features and algorithms offered by 3, that moved along the years from a simple prototype dedicated to robustness analysis to a standalone parametric model checker for timed systems. Étienne André 0001 |
CAV (1) | 1 |
| 2021 | Iterative Bounded Synthesis for Efficient Cycle Detection in Parametric Timed AutomataabstractAbstract We study semi-algorithms to synthesise the constraints under which a Parametric Timed Automaton satisfies some liveness requirement. The algorithms traverse a possibly infinite parametric zone graph, searching for accepting cycles. We provide new search and pruning algorithms, leading to successful termination for many examples. We demonstrate the success and efficiency of these algorithms on a benchmark. We also illustrate parameter synthesis for the classical Bounded Retransmission Protocol. Finally, we introduce a new notion of completeness in the limit, to investigate if an algorithm enumerates all solutions. Étienne André 0001, Jaime Arias 0001, Laure Petrucci, Jaco van de Pol |
TACAS (1) | 1 |
| 2021 | Distributed parametric model checking timed automata under non-Zenoness assumption
Étienne André 0001, Hoang Gia Nguyen, Laure Petrucci, Jun Sun 0001 |
Formal Methods Syst. Des. | 1 |
| 2021 | Parametric Schedulability Analysis of a Launcher Flight Control System under Reactivity ConstraintsabstractThe next generation of space systems will have to achieve more and more complex missions. In order to master the development cost and duration of such systems, an alternative to a manual design is to automatically synthesize the main parameters of the system. In this paper, we present an approach for the specific case of the scheduling of the flight control of a space launcher. The approach requires two successive steps: (1) the formalization of the problem to be solved in a parametric formal model and (2) the synthesis of the model parameters with a tool. We first describe the problem of the scheduling of a launcher flight control, then we show how this problem can be formalized with parametric stopwatch automata; we then present the results computed by the parametric timed model checker IMITATOR. We enhance our model by taking into consideration the time for switching context, and we compare the results to those obtained by other tools classically used in scheduling. Étienne André 0001, Emmanuel Coquard, Laurent Fribourg, Jawher Jerray, David Lesens |
Fundam. Informaticae | 1 |
| 2021 | Parametric Analyses of Attack-fault Trees
Étienne André 0001, Didier Lime, Mathias Ramparison, Mariëlle Stoelinga |
Fundam. Informaticae | 1 |
| 2021 | Parametric updates in parametric timed automata
Étienne André 0001, Didier Lime, Mathias Ramparison |
Log. Methods Comput. Sci. | 1 |
| 2020 | Parametric non-interference in timed automataabstractWe consider a notion of non-interference for timed automata (TAs) that allows to quantify the frequency of an attack; that is, we infer values of the minimal time between two consecutive actions of the attacker, so that (s)he disturbs the set of reachable locations. We also synthesize valuations for the timing constants of the TA (seen as parameters) guaranteeing non-interference. We show that this can reduce to reachability synthesis in parametric timed automata. We apply our method to a model of the Fischer mutual exclusion protocol and obtain preliminary results. Étienne André 0001, Aleksander Kryukov |
ICECCS | 1 |
| 2020 | Consistency in Parametric Interval Probabilistic Timed Automata
Étienne André 0001, Benoît Delahaye, Paulin Fournier |
J. Log. Algebraic Methods Program. | 1 |
| 2020 | Language Preservation Problems in Parametric Timed AutomataabstractParametric timed automata (PTA) are a powerful formalism to model and reason about concurrent systems with some unknown timing delays. In this paper, we address the (untimed) language- and trace-preservation problems: given a reference parameter valuation, does there exist another parameter valuation with the same untimed language, or with the same set of traces? We show that these problems are undecidable both for general PTA and for the restricted class of L/U-PTA, even for integer-valued parameters, or over bounded time. On the other hand, we exhibit decidable subclasses: 1-clock PTA, and 1-parameter deterministic L-PTA and U-PTA. We also consider robust versions of these problems, where we additionally require that the language be preserved for all valuations between the reference valuation and the new valuation. Étienne André 0001, Didier Lime, Nicolas Markey |
Log. Methods Comput. Sci. | 1 |
| 2020 | Automated synthesis of local time requirement for service compositionabstractService composition aims at achieving a business goal by composing existing service-based applications or components. The response time of a service is crucial, especially in time-critical business environments, which is often stated as a clause in service-level agreements between service providers and service users. To meet the guaranteed response time requirement of a composite service, it is important to select a feasible set of component services such that their response time will collectively satisfy the response time requirement of the composite service. In this work, we use the BPEL modeling language that aims at specifying Web services. We extend it with timing parameters and equip it with a formal semantics. Then, we propose a fully automated approach to synthesize the response time requirement of component services modeled using BPEL, in the form of a constraint on the local response times. The synthesized requirement will guarantee the satisfaction of the global response time requirement, statically or dynamically. We implemented our work into a tool, Selamat and performed several experiments to evaluate the validity of our approach. Étienne André 0001, Tian Huat Tan, Manman Chen, Shuang Liu 0007, Jun Sun 0001, Yang Liu 0003, Jin Song Dong 0001 |
Softw. Syst. Model. | 1 |
| 2019 | Parametric Timed Model Checking for Guaranteeing Timed Opacity
Étienne André 0001, Jun Sun 0001 |
ATVA | 1 |
| 2019 | Symbolic Monitoring Against Specifications Parametric in Time and DataabstractMonitoring consists in deciding whether a log meets a given specification. In this work, we propose an automata-based formalism to monitor logs in the form of actions associated with time stamps and arbitrarily data values over infinite domains. Our formalism uses both timing parameters and data parameters, and is able to output answers symbolic in these parameters and in the log segments where the property is satisfied or violated. We implemented our approach in an ad-hoc prototype SyMon, and experiments show that its high expressive power still allows for efficient online monitoring. Masaki Waga, Étienne André 0001, Ichiro Hasuo |
CAV (1) | 2 |
| 2019 | Parametric Updates in Parametric Timed Automata
Étienne André 0001, Didier Lime, Mathias Ramparison |
FORTE | 1 |
| 2019 | On the Expressive Power of Invariants in Parametric Timed AutomataabstractThe verification of systems combining hard timing constraints with concurrency is challenging. This challenge becomes even harder when some timing constants are missing or unknown. Parametric timed formalisms, such as parametric timed automata (PTAs), tackle the synthesis of such timing constants (seen as parameters) for which a property holds. Such formalisms are highly expressive, but also undecidable, and few decidable subclasses were proposed. We propose here a syntactic restriction on PTAs consisting in removing guards (constraints on transitions) to keep only invariants (constraints on locations). While this restriction preserves the expressiveness of PTAs (and therefore their undecidability), an additional restriction on the type of constraints allows to not only prove decidability, but also to perform the exact synthesis of parameter valuations satisfying reachability. This formalism, that seems trivial at first sight as it benefits from the decidability of the reachability problem with a better complexity than Timed Automata (TAs), suffers from the undecidability of the whole TCTL logic that TAs, on the contrary enjoy. We believe our formalism allows for an interesting trade-off between decidability and practical expressiveness and is therefore promising. We show its applicability in a small case study. Étienne André 0001, Didier Lime, Mathias Ramparison |
ICECCS | 1 |
| 2019 | Time4sys2imi: A Tool to Formalize Real-Time System Models Under Uncertainty
Étienne André 0001, Jawher Jerray, Sahar Mhiri |
ICTAC | 1 |
| 2019 | Minimal-Time Synthesis for Parametric Timed AutomataabstractParametric timed automata (PTA) extend timed automata by allowing parameters in clock constraints. Such a formalism is for instance useful when reasoning about unknown delays in a timed system. Using existing techniques, a user can synthesize the parameter constraints that allow the system to reach a specified goal location, regardless of how much time has passed for the internal clocks. We focus on synthesizing parameters such that not only the goal location is reached, but we also address the following questions: what is the minimal time to reach the goal location? and for which parameter values can we achieve this? We analyse the problem and present a semi-algorithm to solve it. We also discuss and provide solutions for minimizing a specific parameter value to still reach the goal. We empirically study the performance of these algorithms on a benchmark set for PTAs and show that minimal-time reachability synthesis is more efficient to compute than the standard synthesis algorithm for reachability. Data or code related to this paper is available at: [ 26 ]. Étienne André 0001, Vincent Bloemen, Laure Petrucci, Jaco van de Pol |
TACAS (2) | 1 |
| 2019 | Formalizing Time4sys using parametric timed automataabstractCritical real-time systems must be verified to avoid the risk of dramatic consequences in case of failure. Thales developed an open formalism "Time4Sys" to model real-time systems, with expressive features such as periodic or sporadic tasks, task dependencies, distributed systems, etc. However, Time4Sys does not natively allow for a formal reasoning. In this work, we present a translation from Time4Sys to (parametric) timed automata, so as to allow for a formal verification. Étienne André 0001 |
TASE | 1 |
| 2019 | Parametric Timed Broadcast Protocols
Étienne André 0001, Benoît Delahaye, Paulin Fournier, Didier Lime |
VMCAI | 1 |
| 2019 | Verification of an Industrial Asynchronous Leader Election Algorithm Using Abstractions and Parametric Model Checking
Étienne André 0001, Laurent Fribourg, Jean-Marc Mota, Romain Soulat |
VMCAI | 1 |
| 2019 | Timed ATL: Forget Memory, Just CountabstractIn this paper we investigate the Timed Alternating-Time Temporal Logic (TATL), a discrete-time extension of ATL. In particular, we propose, systematize, and further study semantic variants of TATL, based on different notions of a strategy. The notions are derived from different assumptions about the agents’ memory and observational capabilities, and range from timed perfect recall to untimed memoryless plans. We also introduce a new semantics based on counting the number of visits to locations during the play. We show that all the semantics, except for the untimed memoryless one, are equivalent when punctuality constraints are not allowed in the formulae. In fact, abilities in all those notions of a strategy collapse to the “counting” semantics with only two actions allowed per location. On the other hand, this simple pattern does not extend to the full TATL. As a consequence, we establish a hierarchy of TATL semantics, based on the expressivity of the underlying strategies, and we show when some of the semantics coincide. In particular, we prove that more compact representations are possible for a reasonable subset of TATL specifications, which should improve the efficiency of model checking and strategy synthesis. Michal Knapik, Étienne André 0001, Laure Petrucci, Wojciech Jamroga, Wojciech Penczek |
J. Artif. Intell. Res. | 2 |
| 2019 | What's decidable about parametric timed automata?
Étienne André 0001 |
Int. J. Softw. Tools Technol. Transf. | 1 |
| 2018 | Offline Timed Pattern Matching under UncertaintyabstractGiven a log and a specification, timed pattern matching aims at exhibiting for which start and end dates a specification holds on that log. For example, "a given action is always followed by another action before a given deadline". This problem has strong connections with monitoring real-time systems. We address here timed pattern matching in presence of an uncertain specification, i.e., that may contain timing parameters (e.g., the deadline can be uncertain or unknown). That is, we want to know for which start and end dates, and for what values of the deadline, this property holds. Or what is the minimum or maximum deadline (together with the corresponding start and end dates) for which this property holds. We propose here a framework for timed pattern matching based on parametric timed model checking. In contrast to most parametric timed problems, the solution is effectively computable, and we perform experiments using IMITATOR to show the applicability of our approach. Étienne André 0001, Ichiro Hasuo, Masaki Waga |
ICECCS | 1 |
| 2018 | The language preservation problem is undecidable for parametric event-recording automata
Étienne André 0001, Shangwei Lin 0001 |
Inf. Process. Lett. | 1 |
| 2017 | Learning-Based Compositional Parameter Synthesis for Event-Recording Automata
Étienne André 0001, Shangwei Lin 0001 |
FORTE | 1 |
| 2017 | Efficient Parameter Synthesis Using Optimized State Exploration StrategiesabstractParametric timed automata are a powerful formalism to reason about, model and verify real-time systems in which some constraints are unknown, or subject to uncertainty. Parameter synthesis using parametric timed automata is very sensitive to the state space explosion problem. To mitigate this problem, we propose two new exploration orders, i. e., the "ranking strategy" and the "priority based strategy", and compare them with existing strategies. We consider both complete parameter synthesis, and counterexample synthesis where the analysis stops as soon as some parameter valuations are found. Experimental results using IMITATOR show that our new strategies significantly outperform existing approaches, especially in the counterexample synthesis. Étienne André 0001, Hoang Gia Nguyen, Laure Petrucci |
ICECCS | 1 |
| 2017 | Classification-Based Parameter Synthesis for Parametric Timed Automata
Jiaying Li 0001, Jun Sun 0001, Étienne André 0001 |
ICFEM | 4 |
| 2017 | Preserving Partial-Order Runs in Parametric Time Petri NetsabstractParameter synthesis for timed systems aims at deriving parameter valuations satisfying a given property. In this article, we target concurrent systems. We use partial-order semantics for parametric time Petri nets as a way to both cope with the well-known state-space explosion due to concurrency and significantly enhance the result of an existing synthesis algorithm. Given a reference parameter valuation, our approach synthesizes other valuations preserving the partial-order executions of the reference parameter valuation. We show the applicability of our approach using a tool applied to asynchronous circuits. Étienne André 0001, Thomas Chatain, César Rodríguez |
ACM Trans. Embed. Comput. Syst. | 1 |
| 2016 | Decision Problems for Parametric Timed Automata
Étienne André 0001, Didier Lime, Olivier H. Roux |
ICFEM | 1 |
| 2016 | Optimizing selection of competing services with probabilistic hierarchical refinementabstractRecently, many large enterprises (e.g., Netflix, Amazon) have decomposed their monolithic application into services, and composed them to fulfill their business functionalities. Many hosting services on the cloud, with different Quality of Service (QoS) (e.g., availability, cost), can be used to host the services. This is an example of competing services. QoS is crucial for the satisfaction of users. It is important to choose a set of services that maximize the overall QoS, and satisfy all QoS requirements for the service composition. This problem, known as optimal service selection, is NP-hard. Therefore, an effective method for reducing the search space and guiding the search process is highly desirable. To this end, we introduce a novel technique, called Probabilistic Hierarchical Refinement (ProHR). ProHR effectively reduces the search space by removing competing services that cannot be part of the selection. ProHR provides two methods, probabilistic ranking and hierarchical refinement, that enable smart exploration of the reduced search space. Unlike existing approaches that perform poorly when QoS requirements become stricter, ProHR maintains high performance and accuracy, independent of the strictness of the QoS requirements. ProHR has been evaluated on a publicly available dataset, and has shown significant improvement over existing approaches. Tian Huat Tan, Manman Chen, Jun Sun 0001, Yang Liu 0003, Étienne André 0001, Yinxing Xue, Jin Song Dong 0001 |
ICSE | 5 |
| 2016 | Parametric Deadlock-Freeness Checking Timed Automata
Étienne André 0001 |
ICTAC | 1 |
| 2016 | Consistency in Parametric Interval Probabilistic Timed AutomataabstractWe propose a new abstract formalism for probabilistic timed systems, Parametric Interval Probabilistic Timed Automata, based on an extension of Parametric Timed Automata and Interval Markov Chains. In this context, we consider the consistency problem that amounts to deciding whether a given specification admits at least one implementation. In the context of Interval Probabilistic Timed Automata (with no timing parameters), we show that this problem is decidable and propose a constructive algorithm for its resolution. We show that the existence of parameter valuations ensuring consistency is undecidable in the general context, but still propose a semi-algorithm that resolves it whenever it terminates. Étienne André 0001, Benoît Delahaye |
TIME | 1 |
| 2016 | Formalising concurrent UML state machines using coloured Petri netsabstractAbstract With the increasing complexity of dynamic concurrent systems, a phase of formal specification and formal verification is needed. UML state machines are widely used to specify dynamic systems behaviours. However, the official semantics of UML is described in a semi-formal manner, which renders the formal verification of complex systems delicate. In this paper, we propose a formalisation of UML state machines using coloured Petri nets. We consider in particular concurrent aspects (orthogonal regions, forks, joins, variables), the hierarchy induced by composite states and their associated activities, external, local or inter-level transitions, entry/exit/do behaviours, transition priorities, and shallow history pseudostates. We use a CD player as a motivating example, and run various verifications using CPN Tools. Étienne André 0001, Mohamed Mahdi Benmoussa, Christine Choppy |
Formal Aspects Comput. | 1 |
| 2015 | Enhanced Distributed Behavioral Cartography of Parametric Timed Automata
Étienne André 0001, Camille Coti, Hoang Gia Nguyen |
ICFEM | 1 |
| 2014 | PeCAn: Compositional Verification of Petri Nets Made Easy
Dinh-Thuan Le, Huu-Vu Nguyen, Phuong-Nam Mai, Bao-Trung Pham-Duy, Thanh Tho Quan, Étienne André 0001, Laure Petrucci, Yang Liu 0003 |
ATVA | 7 |
| 2014 | Automated runtime recovery for QoS-based service compositionabstractService composition uses existing service-based applications as components to achieve a business goal. The composite service operates in a highly dynamic environment; hence, it can fail at any time due to the failure of component services. Service composition languages such as BPEL provide a compensation mechanism to rollback the error. But such a compensation mechanism has several issues. For instance, it cannot guarantee the functional properties of the composite service after compensation. In this work, we propose an automated approach based on a genetic algorithm to calculate the recovery plan that could guarantee the satisfaction of functional properties of the composite service after recovery. Given a composite service with large state space, the proposed method does not require exploring the full state space of the composite service; therefore, it allows efficient selection of recovery plan. In addition, the selection of recovery plans is based on their quality of service (QoS). A QoS-optimal recovery plan allows effective recovery from the state of failure. Our approach has been evaluated on real-world case studies, and has shown promising results. Tian Huat Tan, Manman Chen, Étienne André 0001, Jun Sun 0001, Yang Liu 0003, Jin Song Dong 0001 |
WWW | 3 |
| 2014 | Parameter synthesis for hierarchical concurrent real-time systems
Étienne André 0001, Yang Liu 0003, Jun Sun 0001, Jin Song Dong 0001 |
Real Time Syst. | 1 |
| 2014 | Learning Assumptions for CompositionalVerification of Timed SystemsabstractCompositional techniques such as assume-guarantee reasoning (AGR) can help to alleviate the state space explosion problem associated with model checking. However, compositional verification is difficult to be automated, especially for timed systems, because constructing appropriate assumptions for AGR usually requires human creativity and experience. To automate compositional verification of timed systems, we propose a compositional verification framework using a learning algorithm for automatic construction of timed assumptions for AGR. We prove the correctness and termination of the proposed learning-based framework, and experimental results show that our method performs significantly better than traditional monolithic timed model checking. Shangwei Lin 0001, Étienne André 0001, Yang Liu 0003, Jun Sun 0001, Jin Song Dong 0001 |
IEEE Trans. Software Eng. | 2 |
| 2013 | Merge and Conquer: State Merging in Parametric Timed Automata
Étienne André 0001, Laurent Fribourg, Romain Soulat |
ATVA | 1 |
| 2013 | PSyHCoS: Parameter Synthesis for Hierarchical Concurrent Real-Time Systems
Étienne André 0001, Yang Liu 0003, Jun Sun 0001, Jin Song Dong 0001, Shangwei Lin 0001 |
CAV | 1 |
| 2013 | Observer Patterns for Real-Time SystemsabstractIn the past few decades, many formal techniques for verifying complex concurrent and real-time systems, as well as many property languages, have been proposed. Unfortunately, many of these techniques involve formalisms that are not always easy to handle by engineers, furthermore, they generally need dedicated tools. We propose here a set of correctness patterns encoding common properties met when verifying concurrent real-time systems. We show how to translate these patterns into pure reachability problems, thus avoiding the use of complex verification algorithms. Furthermore, we provide an instantiation of these patterns in both timed automata and stateful timed CSP, to show the applicability of our approach. Étienne André 0001 |
ICECCS | 1 |
| 2013 | CosyVerif: An Open Source Extensible Verification EnvironmentabstractCosyVerif aims at gathering within a common framework various existing tools for specification and verification. It has been designed in order to 1) support different formalisms with the ability to easily create new ones, 2) provide a graphical user interface for every formalism, 3) include verification tools called via the graphical interface or via an API as a Web service, and 4) offer the possibility for a developer to integrate his/her own tool without much effort, also allowing it to interact with the other tools. Several tools have already been integrated for the formal verification of (extensions of) Petri nets and timed automata. Étienne André 0001, Yousra Lembachar, Laure Petrucci, Francis Hulin-Hubard, Alban Linard, Lom-Messan Hillah, Fabrice Kordon |
ICECCS | 1 |
| 2013 | A Modular Approach for Reusing Formalisms in Verification Tools of Concurrent Systems
Étienne André 0001, Benoît Barbot, Clement Demoulins, Lom-Messan Hillah, Francis Hulin-Hubard, Fabrice Kordon, Alban Linard, Laure Petrucci |
ICFEM | 1 |
| 2013 | Dynamic synthesis of local time requirement for service compositionabstractService composition makes use of existing service-based applications as components to achieve a business goal. In time critical business environments, the response time of a service is crucial, which is also reflected as a clause in service level agreements (SLAs) between service providers and service users. To allow the composite service to fulfill the response time requirement as promised, it is important to find a feasible set of component services, such that their response time could collectively allow the satisfaction of the response time of the composite service. In this work, we propose a fully automated approach to synthesize the response time requirement of component services, in the form of a constraint on the local response times, that guarantees the global response time requirement. Our approach is based on parameter synthesis techniques for real-time systems. It has been implemented and evaluated with real-world case studies. Tian Huat Tan, Étienne André 0001, Jun Sun 0001, Yang Liu 0003, Jin Song Dong 0001, Manman Chen |
ICSE | 2 |
| 2013 | A Formal Semantics for Complete UML State Machines with Communications
Shuang Liu 0007, Yang Liu 0003, Étienne André 0001, Christine Choppy, Jun Sun 0001, Bimlesh Wadhwa, Jin Song Dong 0001 |
IFM | 3 |
| 2013 | An extension of the inverse method to probabilistic timed automata
Étienne André 0001, Laurent Fribourg, Jeremy Sproston |
Formal Methods Syst. Des. | 1 |
| 2013 | Modeling and verifying hierarchical real-time systems using stateful timed CSPabstractModeling and verifying complex real-time systems are challenging research problems. The de facto approach is based on Timed Automata, which are finite state automata equipped with clock variables. Timed Automata are deficient in modeling hierarchical complex systems. In this work, we propose a language called Stateful Timed CSP and an automated approach for verifying Stateful Timed CSP models. Stateful Timed CSP is based on Timed CSP and is capable of specifying hierarchical real-time systems. Through dynamic zone abstraction, finite-state zone graphs can be generated automatically from Stateful Timed CSP models, which are subject to model checking. Like Timed Automata, Stateful Timed CSP models suffer from Zeno runs, that is, system runs that take infinitely many steps within finite time. Unlike Timed Automata, model checking with non-Zenoness in Stateful Timed CSP can be achieved based on the zone graphs. We extend the PAT model checker to support system modeling and verification using Stateful Timed CSP and show its usability/scalability via verification of real-world systems. Jun Sun 0001, Yang Liu 0003, Jin Song Dong 0001, Yan Liu 0012, Ling Shi 0002, Étienne André 0001 |
ACM Trans. Softw. Eng. Methodol. | 6 |
| 2012 | IMITATOR 2.5: A Tool for Analyzing Robustness in Scheduling Problems
Étienne André 0001, Laurent Fribourg, Ulrich Kühne, Romain Soulat |
FM | 1 |
| 2012 | Automatic Compositional Verification of Timed Systems
Shangwei Lin 0001, Yang Liu 0003, Jun Sun 0001, Jin Song Dong 0001, Étienne André 0001 |
FM | 5 |
| 2012 | Parameter Synthesis for Hierarchical Concurrent Real-Time Systems
Étienne André 0001, Yang Liu 0003, Jun Sun 0001, Jin Song Dong 0001 |
ICECCS | 1 |
| 2011 | An Efficient Algorithm for Learning Event-Recording Automata
Shangwei Lin 0001, Étienne André 0001, Jin Song Dong 0001, Jun Sun 0001, Yang Liu 0003 |
ATVA | 2 |
| 2009 | IMITATOR: A Tool for Synthesizing Constraints on Timing Bounds of Timed Automata
Étienne André 0001 |
ICTAC | 1 |