arXiv · 2504.19814
High-Level Message Sequence Charts: Satisfiability and Realizability Revisited
Abstract
Message sequence charts (MSCs) visually represent interactions in distributed systems that communicate through FIFO channels. High-level MSCs (HMSCs) extend MSCs with choice, concatenation, and iteration, allowing for the specification of complex behaviors. This paper revisits two classical problems for HMSCs: satisfiability and realizability. Satisfiability (also known as reachability or nonemptiness) asks whether there exists a path in the HMSC that gives rise to a valid behavior. Realizability concerns translating HMSCs into communicating finite-state machines to ensure correct system implementations. While most positive results assume bounded channels, we introduce a class of HMSCs that allows for unbounded channels while maintaining effective implementations. On the other hand, we show that the corresponding satisfiability problem is still undecidable.
Explore related subjects
Keep this discovery
Explore connections, maps & timelines
Benedikt Bollig, Marie Fortin, Paul Gastin. 2025-04-28. High-Level Message Sequence Charts: Satisfiability and Realizability Revisited. https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.19814
Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.