Validating a complex system specification is a difficult problem. Generating behaviors and using them to critique a specification is one effective approach. Up until now, symbolic evaluation has been the key technique of behavior generation. Unfortunately, it has problems both in the amount of time it takes to complete a symbolic run, and in the large amount of uninteresting data. it produces.
We propose policy-directed envisionment as an alternative to symbolic evaluation. This approach supplements the basic envisioning techniques of qualitative physics with behavioral goals in the form of policies. This combination overcomes the problems of symbolic evaluation by generating interpretations in a reasonable amount of time and by exploiting policies to prioritize and analyze the interpretations.
This paper describes the SC system, which employs policy-directed enÂvisionment to critique specifications.