A system for deduction-based formal verification of workflow-oriented software models

Abstract

The work concerns formal verification of workflow-oriented software models using the deductive approach. The formal correctness of a model's behaviour is considered. Manually building logical specifications, which are regarded as a set of temporal logic formulas, seems to be a significant obstacle for an inexperienced user when applying the deductive approach. A system, along with its architecture, for deduction-based verification of workflow-oriented models is proposed. The process inference is based on the semantic tableaux method, which has some advantages when compared with traditional deduction strategies. The algorithm for automatic generation of logical specifications is proposed. The generation procedure is based on predefined workflow patterns for BPMN, which is a standard and dominant notation for the modeling of business processes. The main idea behind the approach is to consider patterns, defined in terms of temporal logic, as a kind of (logical) primitives which enable the transformation of models to temporal logic formulas constituting a logical specification. Automation of the generation process is crucial for bridging the gap between the intuitiveness of deductive reasoning and the difficulty of its practical application when logical specifications are built manually. This approach has gone some way towards supporting, hopefully enhancing, our understanding of deduction-based formal verification of workflow-oriented models.

Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing

“…The historical behaviors are encoded into logical specifications, and can be later analyzed for satisfiability, c.f. works [9] or [7,8,10], supporting the current reasoning process and behavior recognition.…”

A Web-Based Model for Inspection Inconsistencies Resolution: A New Approach With Two Case Studies

“…The last mandatory phase of inspection process is the follow-up and the main responsibility is on the moderator to check if all defects are fixed and ask the author for clarifications (if any). The studies show that there is no justification to ensure the companies managers for cost deduction and reduce the defects by inspection rather than using software regular tests [2]. In a comprehensive study, the researchers concludes [3] : " most of the organizations are not able to use inspections in software development process as these are too rigorous to follow, even with computer tool support it is complex for organizations to implement it.…”

Comparison of Selected Modeling Notations for Process, Decision and System Modeling

“…Three levels of models can be distinguished [22]: a descriptive level, which is the basic level that uses a very intuitive subset of BPMN to reflect a "happy path" scenario and all major activities in a process; an analytical level, dedicated to analysts, modelers and business architects that use complex structures and elements to design fully representative processes, and an executable level for technicians in which execution details can be captured in the model. Additionally, many different extensions of BPMN were proposed to capture other aspects of business processes [23]- [28].…”