Lightweight Verification of a Multi-Task Threaded Server: A Case Study With The Plural Tool

In this case study, we used the Plural tool to verify the design of a commercial multi-task threaded application (MTTS) implemented by Novabase, which has been used for massively parallelising computational tasks. The effort undertaken in this case study has revealed several issues related with the design of the MTTS, with programming practices used in its implementation, and with domain specific properties of the MTTS. This case study has also provided insight on how the analysis done by the Plural tool can be improved. The Plural tool performs lightweight verification of Java programs. Plural specification language combines typestates and access permissions, backed by Linear Logic. The Plural specifications we wrote for the MTTS are based on its code, its informal documentation, sometimes embedded in the code, and our discussions with Novabase’s engineers, who validated our understanding of the MTTS application.