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Purpose of This Tutorial


The purpose of this tutorial is to make you familiar with the essential validation functionality in the SDL Suite. With validation we mean exploring the state space of an SDL system with powerful methods and tools that will find virtually any kind of possible run-time errors that may be difficult to find with regular simulation and debugging techniques.

This tutorial is designed as a guided tour through the SDL Suite, where a number of hands-on exercises should be performed on your computer as you read this chapter.

We have on purpose selected a simple example that should be easy to understand. It is assumed that you have a basic knowledge about SDL -- this chapter is not a tutorial on SDL.

It is assumed that you have performed the exercises in Tutorial: The Editors and the Analyzer as well as Tutorial: The SDL Simulator before starting with the tutorial on the SDL Explorer.

Note: C compiler

You must have a C compiler installed on your computer system in order to validate an SDL system. Make sure you know what C compiler(s) you have access to before starting this tutorial.

Note: Platform differences

This tutorial, and all tutorials that are possible to run on both the UNIX and Windows platform, are described in a way common to both platforms. In case there are differences between the platforms, this is indicated by texts like "on UNIX", "Windows only", etc. When such platform indicators are found, please pay attention only to the instructions for the platform you are running on.

Normally, screen shots will only be shown for one of the platforms, provided they contain the same information for both platforms. This means that the layout and appearance of screen shots may differ slightly from what you see when running the SDL Suite in your environment. Only if a screen shot differs in an important aspect between the platforms will two separate screen shots be shown.


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