Reo + mCRL2: A Framework for Model-checking Dataflow in Service Compositions

The paradigm of service-oriented computing revolutionized the field of software engineering. According to this paradigm, new systems are composed of existing stand-alone services to support complex cross-organizational business processes. Correct communication of these services is not possible without a proper coordination mechanism. The Reo coordination language is a channel-based modeling language that introduces various types of channels and their composition rules. By composing Reo channels, one can specify Reo connectors that realize arbitrary complex behavioral protocols. Several formalisms have been introduced to give semantics to Reo. In their most basic form, they reflect service synchronization and dataflow constraints imposed by connectors. To ensure that the composed system behaves as intended, we need a wide range of automated verification tools to assist service composition designers. In this paper, we present our framework for the verification of Reo using the toolset. We unify our previous work on mapping various semantic models for Reo, namely, constraint automata, timed constraint automata, coloring semantics and the newly developed action constraint automata, to the process algebraic specification language of , address the correctness of this mapping, discuss tool support, and present a detailed example that illustrates the use of Reo empowered with for the analysis of dataflow in service-based process models

Reo + mCRL2: A Framework for Model-Checking Dataflow in Service Compositions

The paradigm of service-oriented computing revolutionized the field of software engineering. According to this paradigm, new systems are composed of existing stand-alone services to support complex cross-organizational business processes. Correct communication of these services is not possible without a proper coordination mechanism. The Reo coordination language is a channel-based modeling language that introduces various types of channels and their composition rules. By composing Reo channels, one can specify Reo connectors that realize arbitrary complex behavioral protocols. Several formalisms have been introduced to give semantics to Reo. In their most basic form, they reflect service synchronization and dataflow constraints imposed by connectors. To ensure that the composed system behaves as intended, we need a wide range of automated verification tools to assist service composition designers. In this paper, we present our framework for the verification of Reo using the mCRL2 toolset. We unify our previous work on mapping various semantic models for Reo, namely, constraint automata, timed constraint automata, coloring semantics and the newly developed action constraint automata, to the process algebraic specification language of mCRL2, address the correctness of this mapping, discuss tool support, and present a detailed example that illustrates the use of Reo empowered with mCRL2 for the analysis of dataflow in service-based process models

Timing verification in transaction modeling

Les systèmes Matériels/Logiciels deviennent indispensables dans tous les aspects de la vie quotidienne. La présence croissante de ces systèmes dans les différents produits et services incite à trouver des méthodes pour les développer efficacement. Mais une conception efficace de ces systèmes est limitée par plusieurs facteurs, certains d'entre eux sont: la complexité croissante des applications, une augmentation de la densité d'intégration, la nature hétérogène des produits et services, la diminution de temps d’accès au marché. Une modélisation transactionnelle (TLM) est considérée comme un paradigme prometteur permettant de gérer la complexité de conception et fournissant des moyens d’exploration et de validation d'alternatives de conception à des niveaux d’abstraction élevés. Cette recherche propose une méthodologie d’expression de temps dans TLM basée sur une analyse de contraintes temporelles. Nous proposons d'utiliser une combinaison de deux paradigmes de développement pour accélérer la conception: le TLM d'une part et une méthodologie d’expression de temps entre différentes transactions d’autre part. Cette synergie nous permet de combiner dans un seul environnement des méthodes de simulation performantes et des méthodes analytiques formelles. Nous avons proposé un nouvel algorithme de vérification temporelle basé sur la procédure de linéarisation des contraintes de type min/max et une technique d'optimisation afin d'améliorer l'efficacité de l'algorithme. Nous avons complété la description mathématique de tous les types de contraintes présentées dans la littérature. Nous avons développé des méthodes d'exploration et raffinement de système de communication qui nous a permis d'utiliser les algorithmes de vérification temporelle à différents niveaux TLM. Comme il existe plusieurs définitions du TLM, dans le cadre de notre recherche, nous avons défini une méthodologie de spécification et simulation pour des systèmes Matériel/Logiciel basée sur le paradigme de TLM. Dans cette méthodologie plusieurs concepts de modélisation peuvent être considérés séparément. Basée sur l'utilisation des technologies modernes de génie logiciel telles que XML, XSLT, XSD, la programmation orientée objet et plusieurs autres fournies par l’environnement .Net, la méthodologie proposée présente une approche qui rend possible une réutilisation des modèles intermédiaires afin de faire face à la contrainte de temps d’accès au marché. Elle fournit une approche générale dans la modélisation du système qui sépare les différents aspects de conception tels que des modèles de calculs utilisés pour décrire le système à des niveaux d’abstraction multiples. En conséquence, dans le modèle du système nous pouvons clairement identifier la fonctionnalité du système sans les détails reliés aux plateformes de développement et ceci mènera à améliorer la "portabilité" du modèle d'application.Hardware/Software (Hw/Sw) systems are likely to become essential in all aspects of everyday life. The increasing penetration of Hw/Sw systems in products and services creates a necessity of their efficient development. However, the productive design of these systems is limited by several factors, some of them being the increasing complexity of applications, the increasing degree of integration, the heterogeneous nature of products and services as well as the shrinking of the time-to-market delay. Transaction Level Modeling (TLM) paradigm is considered as one of the most promising simulation paradigms to break down the design complexity by allowing the exploration and validation of design alternatives at high levels of abstraction. This research proposes a timing expression methodology in TLM based on temporal constraints analysis. We propose to use a combination of two paradigms to accelerate the design process: TLM on one hand and a methodology to express timing between different transactions on the other hand. Using a timing specification model and underlining timing constraints verification algorithms can decrease the time needed for verification by simulation. Combining in one framework the simulation and analytical design exploration methods can improve the analytical power of design verification and validation. We have proposed a new timing verification algorithm based on the linearization procedure and an optimization technique to improve its efficiency. We have completed the mathematical representation of all constraint types discussed in the literature creating in this way a unified timing specification methodology that can be used in the expression of a wider class of applications than previously presented ones. We have developed the methods for communication structure exploration and refinement that permitted us to apply the timing verification algorithms in system exploration at different TLM levels. As there are many definitions of TLM and many development environments proposing TLM in their design cycle with several pro and contra, in the context of our research we define a hardware/software (Hw/Sw) specification and simulation methodology which supports TLM in such a way that several modeling concepts can be seen separately. Relying on the use of modern software engineering technologies such as XML, XSLT, XSD, object oriented programming and others supported by the .Net Framework, an approach that makes an intermediate design model reuse possible in order to cope with time-to-market constraint is presented. The proposed TLM design methodology provides a general approach in system modeling that separates various application modeling aspects from system specification: computational models, used in application modeling, supported by the language used for the functional specification and provided by simulator. As a result, in the system model we can clearly identify system functionality without details related to the development platform thereby leading to a better “portability” of the application model

An Integrated Methodology for Creating Composed Web/Grid Services

This thesis presents an approach to design, specify, validate, verify, implement, and evaluate composed web/grid services. Web and grid services can be composed to create new services with complex behaviours. The BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) standard was created to enable the orchestration of web services, but there have also been investigation of its use for grid services. BPEL specifies the implementation of service composition but has no formal semantics; implementations are in practice checked by testing. Formal methods are used in general to define an abstract model of system behaviour that allows simulation and reasoning about properties. The approach can detect and reduce potentially costly errors at design time. CRESS (Communication Representation Employing Systematic Specification) is a domainindependent, graphical, abstract notation, and integrated toolset for developing composite web service. The original version of CRESS had automated support for formal specification in LOTOS (Language Of Temporal Ordering Specification), executing formal validation with MUSTARD (Multiple-Use Scenario Testing and Refusal Description), and implementing in BPEL4WS as the early version of BPEL standard. This thesis work has extended CRESS and its integrated tools to design, specify, validate, verify, implement, and evaluate composed web/grid services. The work has extended the CRESS notation to support a wider range of service compositions, and has applied it to grid services as a new domain. The thesis presents two new tools, CLOVE (CRESS Language-Oriented Verification Environment) and MINT (MUSTARD Interpreter), to respectively support formal verification and implementation testing. New work has also extended CRESS to automate implementation of composed services using the more recent BPEL standard WS-BPEL 2.0

Execution/Simulation of Context/Constraint-aware Composite Services using GIPSY

For fulfilling a complex requirement comprising of several sub-tasks, a composition of simple web services, each of which is dedicated to performing a specific sub-task involved, proves to be a more competent solution in comparison to an equivalent atomic web service. Owing to advantages such as re-usability of components, broader options for composition requesters and liberty to specialize for component providers, for over two decades now, composite services have been extensively researched to the point of being perfected in many aspects. Yet, most of the studies undertaken in this field fail to acknowledge that every web service has a limited context in which it can successfully perform its tasks, the boundaries of which are defined by the internal constraints placed on the service by its providers. When used as part of a composition, the restricted context-spaces of all such component services together define the contextual boundaries of the composite service as a unit, which makes internal constraints an influential factor for composite service functionality. However, due to the limited exposure received by them, no systems have yet been proposed to cater to the specific verification of internal constraints imposed on components of a composite service. In an attempt to address this gap in service composition research, in this thesis, we propose a multi-faceted solution capable of not only automatically constructing context-aware composite web services with their internal constraints positioned for optimum resource-utilization but also of validating the generated compositions using the General Intensional Programming SYstem (GIPSY) as a time- and cost-efficient simulation/execution environment

Model checking of component connectors

We present a framework for automata theoretic model checking of coordination systems specified in Reo coordination language. To this goal, we introduce Buchi automata of records (BAR) and their augmented version (ABAR) as an operational modeling formalism that covers several intended forms of behavior of Reo connectors, such as fairness, I/O synchronization, and context dependency. To specify the properties to be verified, we introduce an action based linear temporal logic, interpreted over the executions of augmented Buchi automata of records, and show how the formulas can be translated into ABARs. This translation can be done either inductively, or by using an on-the-fly method. To deal with the large state spaces, we show that ABARs can be implemented using ordered binary decision diagrams (OBDD). For this purpose, we also introduce the necessary modifications over the basic model checking algorithm that can be applied directly over OBDD structures. Our implementation and a number of case studies that we carried out show the applicability of our method over large state spaces. We also show that the state explosion problem can be tackled by compositional minimization methods using some suitable equivalence relations. In fact, we show two equivalences that are congruencies with respect to the connector composition operators and such that they both preserves linear time temporal logic properties.UBL - phd migration 201