105,791 research outputs found
Verification of Agent-Based Artifact Systems
Artifact systems are a novel paradigm for specifying and implementing
business processes described in terms of interacting modules called artifacts.
Artifacts consist of data and lifecycles, accounting respectively for the
relational structure of the artifacts' states and their possible evolutions
over time. In this paper we put forward artifact-centric multi-agent systems, a
novel formalisation of artifact systems in the context of multi-agent systems
operating on them. Differently from the usual process-based models of services,
the semantics we give explicitly accounts for the data structures on which
artifact systems are defined. We study the model checking problem for
artifact-centric multi-agent systems against specifications written in a
quantified version of temporal-epistemic logic expressing the knowledge of the
agents in the exchange. We begin by noting that the problem is undecidable in
general. We then identify two noteworthy restrictions, one syntactical and one
semantical, that enable us to find bisimilar finite abstractions and therefore
reduce the model checking problem to the instance on finite models. Under these
assumptions we show that the model checking problem for these systems is
EXPSPACE-complete. We then introduce artifact-centric programs, compact and
declarative representations of the programs governing both the artifact system
and the agents. We show that, while these in principle generate infinite-state
systems, under natural conditions their verification problem can be solved on
finite abstractions that can be effectively computed from the programs. Finally
we exemplify the theoretical results of the paper through a mainstream
procurement scenario from the artifact systems literature
Static Safety for an Actor Dedicated Process Calculus by Abstract Interpretation
The actor model eases the definition of concurrent programs with non uniform
behaviors. Static analysis of such a model was previously done in a data-flow
oriented way, with type systems. This approach was based on constraint set
resolution and was not able to deal with precise properties for communications
of behaviors. We present here a new approach, control-flow oriented, based on
the abstract interpretation framework, able to deal with communication of
behaviors. Within our new analyses, we are able to verify most of the previous
properties we observed as well as new ones, principally based on occurrence
counting
GSOS for non-deterministic processes with quantitative aspects
Recently, some general frameworks have been proposed as unifying theories for
processes combining non-determinism with quantitative aspects (such as
probabilistic or stochastically timed executions), aiming to provide general
results and tools. This paper provides two contributions in this respect.
First, we present a general GSOS specification format (and a corresponding
notion of bisimulation) for non-deterministic processes with quantitative
aspects. These specifications define labelled transition systems according to
the ULTraS model, an extension of the usual LTSs where the transition relation
associates any source state and transition label with state reachability weight
functions (like, e.g., probability distributions). This format, hence called
Weight Function SOS (WFSOS), covers many known systems and their bisimulations
(e.g. PEPA, TIPP, PCSP) and GSOS formats (e.g. GSOS, Weighted GSOS,
Segala-GSOS, among others).
The second contribution is a characterization of these systems as coalgebras
of a class of functors, parametric on the weight structure. This result allows
us to prove soundness of the WFSOS specification format, and that
bisimilarities induced by these specifications are always congruences.Comment: In Proceedings QAPL 2014, arXiv:1406.156
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