In [BGM01], the Grenoble group summarizes its experience with the language IF, and the IF tool-set which is an open validation environment for distributed software systems. Indeed, face to the increasing complexity of such systems, none of the existing tools can cover by itself the whole validation process. The IF environment was built upon an expressive intermediate language and allows to connect several validation tools, providing most of the advanced techniques currently available. The results obtained on several large case-studies, including telecommunication protocols and embedded software systems, confirm the practical interest of this approach.
In [VER01] a new version of the language IF is defined. A compiler and a simulator have been implemented for it. The new version of the IF language has been used for specifying and simulating the PGM protocol [VR01].