Testing-based abstractions for value-passing systems.

This paper presents a framework for the abstract interpretation of processes that pass values. We define a process description language that is parameterized with respect to the set of values that processes may exchange and show that an abstraction over values induces an abstract semantics for processes. Our main results state that if the abstract value interpretation safely/optimally approximates the ground interpretation, then the resulting abstracted processes safely/optimally approximate those derived from the ground semantics (in a precisely defined sense). As the processes derived from an abstract semantics in general have far fewer states than those derived from a concrete semantics, our technique enables the automatic analysis of systems that lie beyond the scope of existing techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]