Patent ID: 7076407

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for generating a reduced state space representation for a model in a compositional state system, the model comprising a selected set of components, each component comprising one or more states and one or more events, the model comprising interactions associated with events, the reduced state space representation being defined with respect to a set of events of interest selected from the events in the set of components, the method comprising the following steps: a. for each component in the set of components, generating a transitive effect machine data structure for the component such that the states of the transitive effect machine represent the states of the component and the events of the transitive effect machine represent the transitive effects of interactions associated with transitions of the component, the transitive effects being defined relative to the set of components, and the set of events of interest, and b. selecting each of the generated transitive effect machine data structures, and for each selected transitive effect machine data structure, carrying out a computer-implemented reduction process on the selected transitive effect machine data structure to replace the selected transitive effect machine data structure with a reduced transitive effect machine data structure, each of the said reduction processes comprising the step of classifying states within the selected transitive effect machine to permit grouping of states into a single class defined by common properties of such states with respect to the set of events of interest.