Rule-Level Verification of Business Process Transformations using CSP

Business Process Reengineering is one of the most widely adopted techniques to improve the efficiency of organisations. Transforming process models, we intend to change their semantics in certain predefined ways, making them more flexible, more restrictive, etc. To understand and control the semantic consequences of change we use CSP to capture the behaviour of processes before and after the transformation. Formalising process transformations by graph transformation rules, we are interested in verifying semantic properties of these transformations at the level of rules, so that every application of a rule has a known semantic effect. It turns out that we can do so if the mapping of activity diagrams models into the semantic domain CSP is compositional, i.e., compatible with the embedding of processes into larger contexts

Verifying Model Transformations by Structural Correspondence

Model transformations play a significant role in model based software development, and the correctness of the transformation is crucial to the success of the development effort. We have previously shown how we can use bisimulation to verify the preservation of certain behavioral properties across a transformation. However, transformations are often used to construct structurally different models, and we might wish to ensure that there is some structural correspondence to the original model. It may be possible to verify such transformations without having to explicitly specify the dynamic semantics of the source and target languages. In this paper, we present a technique to verify such transformations, by first specifying certain structural correspondence rules between the source and target languages, and extending the transformation so that these rules can be easily evaluated on the instance models. This will allow us to conclude if the output model has the expected structure. The verification is performed at the instance level, meaning that each execution of the transformation is verified. We will also look at some examples using this technique

Fifty years of Hoare's Logic

We present a history of Hoare's logic.Comment: 79 pages. To appear in Formal Aspects of Computin

Static Type Checking of Model Transformation Programs

Model transformation is seen as a promising approach to automate software development and verification, thus improving quality and reducing production costs significantly. However, errors of transformation programs can propagate into the generated artifacts complicating the detection of errors. The current paper proposes a static type checking approach for early detection of typing errors of partially typed transformation programs. The approach describes type safety as constraint satisfaction problems, and uses a dedicated back-annotation mechanism for error feedback

Constraint Design Rewriting

We propose an algebraic approach to the design and transformation of constraint networks, inspired by Architectural Design Rewriting. The approach can be understood as (i) an extension of ADR with constraints, and (ii) an application of ADR to the design of reconfigurable constraint networks. The main idea is to consider classes of constraint networks as algebras whose operators are used to denote constraint networks with terms. Constraint network transformations such as constraint propagations are specified with rewrite rules exploiting the network’s structure provided by terms

Software System Model Correctness using Graph Theory: A Review

The Unified Modeling Language UML is the de facto standard for object-oriented software model development The UML class diagram plays an essential role in design and specification of software systems The purpose of a class diagram is to display classes with their attributes and methods hierarchy generalization class relationships and associations general aggregation and composition between classes in one mode

Contract-based test generation for data flow of business processes using constraint programming

The verification of the properties of a business process (BP) has become a significant research topic in recent years. In the early stages of development, the BP model (e.g. BPMN, EPC), the BP contract (task contract, regulations and laws, business rules), and the test objectives (requirements) are the only elements available. In order to support the modellers, automatic tools must be provided in order to check whether their business processes are in line with the BP contract. This paper proposes a new business process called the automatic test-case generator to automate the generation of test cases and verify that a BP has the intended functionality (semantic conformance). This generator is analysed, designed and implemented by taking into account the following tasks: Annotation of the BP model with the business process contract, calculation of the various data flow paths, transformation of these data flow paths into SSA form, and a modelling of a constraint satisfaction problem (constraint programming) of the BP contract for all data flow paths. The execution of this business process generates the test cases automatically.Junta de Andalucía P08-TIC-04095Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TIN2009-1371