The Power of Well-Structured Systems

Abstract

Well-structured systems, aka WSTSs, are computational models where the set of possible configurations is equipped with a well-quasi-ordering which is compatible with the transition relation between configurations. This structure supports generic decidability results that are important in verification and several other fields. This paper recalls the basic theory underlying well-structured systems and shows how two classic decision algorithms can be formulated as an exhaustive search for some "bad" sequences. This lets us describe new powerful techniques for the complexity analysis of WSTS algorithms. Recently, these techniques have been successful in precisely characterising the power, in a complexity-theoretical sense, of several important WSTS models like unreliable channel systems, monotonic counter machines, or networks of timed systems.

Invited talk

References in corpus (3)

• Ackermannian and Primitive-Recursive Bounds with Dickson's Lemma
• Multiply-Recursive Upper Bounds with Higman's Lemma
• The Power of Well-Structured Systems

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Complexity Hierarchies Beyond Elementary
• The Power of Well-Structured Systems
• Complexity Bounds for Ordinal-Based Termination
• Parameterized Verification of Systems with Global Synchronization and Guards
• A Characterization for Decidable Separability by Piecewise Testable Languages
• Well Behaved Transition Systems
• Keeping a Crowd Safe: On the Complexity of Parameterized Verification (Corrected version)
• QuickSilver: A Modeling and Parameterized Verification Framework for Systems with Distributed Agreement (Extended Version)
• Parameterized Verification of Systems with Precise (0,1)-Counter Abstraction