Behavior Protocols: Fighting the “Spearhead ” Problem *

Abstract. The state space explosion problem is the most burning problem of formal verification methods like model checking. In the behavior protocol checker, a tool for model checking of software components, various optimization of state representation were implemented thus speeding up the checking process. In some special cases, however, the optimization introduces a problem referred to as the “spearhead” problem causing some parts of the state space more than once. In this paper, we propose a solution to this problem and demonstrate the efficiency of improved version of behavior protocol checker. 1