  Vector addition systems are an important model in theoretical computer
science and have been used for the analysis of systems in a variety of areas.
Termination is a crucial property of vector addition systems and has received
considerable interest in the literature. In this paper we give a complete
method for the construction of ranking functions for vector addition systems
with states. The interest in ranking functions is motivated by the fact that
ranking functions provide valuable additional information in case of
termination: They provide an explanation for the progress of the vector
addition system, which can be reported to the user of a verification tool, and
can be used as certificates for termination. Moreover, we show how ranking
functions can be used for the computational complexity analysis of vector
addition systems (here complexity refers to the number of steps the vector
addition system under analysis can take in terms of the given initial vector).
