Timed Automata Semantics for Visual e-Contracts

C-O Diagrams have been introduced as a means to have a more visual representation of electronic contracts, where it is possible to represent the obligations, permissions and prohibitions of the different signatories, as well as what are the penalties in case of not fulfillment of their obligations and prohibitions. In such diagrams we are also able to represent absolute and relative timing constraints. In this paper we present a formal semantics for C-O Diagrams based on timed automata extended with an ordering of states and edges in order to represent different deontic modalities.Comment: In Proceedings FLACOS 2011, arXiv:1109.239

Constraint rule-based programming of norms for electronic institutions

Peer reviewedPostprin

Modelling and Simulation of Asynchronous Real-Time Systems using Timed Rebeca

In this paper we propose an extension of the Rebeca language that can be used to model distributed and asynchronous systems with timing constraints. We provide the formal semantics of the language using Structural Operational Semantics, and show its expressiveness by means of examples. We developed a tool for automated translation from timed Rebeca to the Erlang language, which provides a first implementation of timed Rebeca. We can use the tool to set the parameters of timed Rebeca models, which represent the environment and component variables, and use McErlang to run multiple simulations for different settings. Timed Rebeca restricts the modeller to a pure asynchronous actor-based paradigm, where the structure of the model represents the service oriented architecture, while the computational model matches the network infrastructure. Simulation is shown to be an effective analysis support, specially where model checking faces almost immediate state explosion in an asynchronous setting.Comment: In Proceedings FOCLASA 2011, arXiv:1107.584

Monitoring cooperative business contracts in an institutional environment

The automation of B2B processes is currently a hot research topic. In particular, multi-agent systems have been used to address this arena, where agents can represent enterprises in an interaction environment, automating tasks such as contract negotiation and enactment. Contract monitoring tools are becoming more important as the level of automation of business relationships increase. When business is seen as a joint activity that aims at pursuing a common goal, the successful execution of the contract benefits all involved parties, and thus each of them should try to facilitate the compliance of their partners. Taking into account these concerns and inspecting international legislation over trade procedures, in this paper we present an approach to model contractual obligations: obligations are directed from bearers to counterparties and have flexible deadlines. We formalize the semantics of such obligations using temporal logic, and we provide rules that allow for monitoring them. The proposed implementation is based on a rule-based forward chaining production system

A modal logic for reasoning on consistency and completeness of regulations

In this paper, we deal with regulations that may exist in multi-agent systems in order to regulate agent behaviour and we discuss two properties of regulations, that is consistency and completeness. After defining what consistency and completeness mean, we propose a way to consistently complete incomplete regulations. In this contribution, we extend previous works and we consider that regulations are expressed in a first order modal deontic logic

Knowledge Representation Concepts for Automated SLA Management

Outsourcing of complex IT infrastructure to IT service providers has increased substantially during the past years. IT service providers must be able to fulfil their service-quality commitments based upon predefined Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with the service customer. They need to manage, execute and maintain thousands of SLAs for different customers and different types of services, which needs new levels of flexibility and automation not available with the current technology. The complexity of contractual logic in SLAs requires new forms of knowledge representation to automatically draw inferences and execute contractual agreements. A logic-based approach provides several advantages including automated rule chaining allowing for compact knowledge representation as well as flexibility to adapt to rapidly changing business requirements. We suggest adequate logical formalisms for representation and enforcement of SLA rules and describe a proof-of-concept implementation. The article describes selected formalisms of the ContractLog KR and their adequacy for automated SLA management and presents results of experiments to demonstrate flexibility and scalability of the approach.Comment: Paschke, A. and Bichler, M.: Knowledge Representation Concepts for Automated SLA Management, Int. Journal of Decision Support Systems (DSS), submitted 19th March 200

Electronic institutions with normative environments for agent-based E-contracting

Tese de doutoramento. Engenharia Informática. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 201

A Web-Based Tool for Analysing Normative Documents in English

Our goal is to use formal methods to analyse normative documents written in English, such as privacy policies and service-level agreements. This requires the combination of a number of different elements, including information extraction from natural language, formal languages for model representation, and an interface for property specification and verification. We have worked on a collection of components for this task: a natural language extraction tool, a suitable formalism for representing such documents, an interface for building models in this formalism, and methods for answering queries asked of a given model. In this work, each of these concerns is brought together in a web-based tool, providing a single interface for analysing normative texts in English. Through the use of a running example, we describe each component and demonstrate the workflow established by our tool