Verification of Semantically-Enhanced Artifact Systems (Extended Version)

TL;DR

This paper introduces a method to enhance artifact-centric systems with a semantic layer using OWL 2 QL ontologies, enabling high-level domain understanding and verification of temporal properties through an integrated tool.

Contribution

It extends the GSM artifact modeling approach with a semantic layer and provides a verification technique for temporal properties using ontology-based data access technologies.

Findings

Successfully integrated semantic layer with GSM models.

Implemented a tool for temporal property verification.

Enabled high-level domain reasoning in artifact systems.

Abstract

Artifact-Centric systems have emerged in the last years as a suitable framework to model business-relevant entities, by combining their static and dynamic aspects. In particular, the Guard-Stage-Milestone (GSM) approach has been recently proposed to model artifacts and their lifecycle in a declarative way. In this paper, we enhance GSM with a Semantic Layer, constituted by a full-fledged OWL 2 QL ontology linked to the artifact information models through mapping specifications. The ontology provides a conceptual view of the domain under study, and allows one to understand the evolution of the artifact system at a higher level of abstraction. In this setting, we present a technique to specify temporal properties expressed over the Semantic Layer, and verify them according to the evolution in the underlying GSM model. This technique has been implemented in a tool that exploits state-of-the-art ontology-based data access technologies to manipulate the temporal properties according to the ontology and the mappings, and that relies on the GSMC model checker for verification.