It is with great pleasure that we present to you this tutorial volume entitled Validation of Stochastic Systems.ItisoneoftheresultsoftheDutch-German- lateral cooperation project Validation of Stochastic Systems (VOSS), ?nanced by NWO and DFG (the Dutch and German science foundations, respectively). In the early days of 2002, the idea emerged to organize a seminar at Schloss Dagstuhl, not the usual Dagstuhl seminar with primarily invited participants, but a seminar aimed at young(er) people, and for which the organizers assign themes to be worked upon and presented on. Following an open call...

Markov Chains are widely used as stochastic models to study a broad spectrum of system performance and dependability characteristics. This monograph is devoted to compositional specification and analysis of Markov chains.
Based on principles known from process algebra, the author systematically develops an algebra of interactive Markov chains. By presenting a number of distinguishing results, of both theoretical and practical nature, the author substantiates the claim that interactive Markov chains are more than just another formalism: Among other, an algebraic theory of interactive Markov...

ETAPS 2006 was the ninth instance of the European Joint Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software. ETAPS is an annual federated conference that was established in 1998 by combining a number of existing and new conferences. This year it comprised ?ve conferences (CC, ESOP, FASE, FOSSACS, TACAS), 18 satellite workshops (AC- CAT, AVIS, CMCS, COCV, DCC, EAAI, FESCA, FRCSS, GT-VMT, LDTA, MBT, QAPL, SC, SLAP, SPIN, TERMGRAPH, WITS and WRLA), two tutorials, and seven invited lectures (not including those that were speci?c to the satellite events). We - ceived over 550 submissions to the ?ve...