View article

A specification formalism for reactive systems defines a class of Ω-languages. We call a specification formalism fully decidable if it is constructively closed under boolean operations and has a decidable satisfiability (nonemptiness) problem. There are two important, robust classes of Ω-languages that are definable by fully decidable formalisms. The Ω -reqular languages are definable by finite automata, or equivalcntly, by the Sequential Calculus. The counter-free Ω-regular languages are definable by temporal logic, or equivalcntly, by the first-order fragment of the Sequential Calculus. The gap between both classes can be closed by finite counting (using automata connectives), or equivalently, by projection (existential second-order quantification over letters).

A specification formalism for real-time systems defines a class of timed Ω-langnages, whose letters have real-numbered time stamps. Two …