%D 2004 %L eprints168 %X In this paper we present work on trail improvement and partial-order reduction in the context of directed explicit-state model checking. Directed explicit-state model checking employs directed heuristic search algorithms such as A* or best-first search to improve the error-detection capabilities of explicit-state model checking. We first present the use of directed explicit-state model checking to improve the length of already established error trails. Second, we show that partial-order reduction, which aims at reducing the size of the state space by exploiting the commutativity of concurrent transitions in asynchronous systems, can coexist well with directed explicit-state model checking. Finally, we illustrate how to mitigate the excessive length of error trails produced by partial-order reduction in explicit-state model checking. In this context we also propose a combination of heuristic search and partial-order reduction to improve the length to already provided counterexamples. %A Stefan Edelkamp %A Stefan Leue %A Alberto Lluch-Lafuente %K Model checking - Heuristic search - Trail improvement - Partial-order reduction - HSF-SPIN %J International Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer (STTT) %N 4 %R 10.1007/s10009-004-0151-z %P 277-301 %T Partial-order reduction and trail improvement in directed model checking %I Springer Berlin / Heidelberg %V 6 %O The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com