An LTL Semantics of Business Workflows with Recovery

TL;DR

This paper presents a formal semantics for business workflows with recovery using Linear Temporal Logic (LTL), enabling iterative design verification and correctness assurance through model checking.

Contribution

It introduces a formal LTL semantics for business workflows with recovery, facilitating correctness verification with minimal procedural disruption.

Findings

LTL semantics effectively models recovery in workflows

Model checking verifies workflow properties and requirements

Approach integrates into existing processes easily

Abstract

We describe a business workflow case study with abnormal behavior management (i.e. recovery) and demonstrate how temporal logics and model checking can provide a methodology to iteratively revise the design and obtain a correct-by construction system. To do so we define a formal semantics by giving a compilation of generic workflow patterns into LTL and we use the bound model checker Zot to prove specific properties and requirements validity. The working assumption is that such a lightweight approach would easily fit into processes that are already in place without the need for a radical change of procedures, tools and people's attitudes. The complexity of formalisms and invasiveness of methods have been demonstrated to be one of the major drawback and obstacle for deployment of formal engineering techniques into mundane projects.