Verification of Time-Aware Business Processes using Constrained Horn Clauses

TL;DR

This paper introduces a method for verifying time-aware business processes by translating them into constrained Horn clauses and using solvers to check properties, enabling formal verification of time constraints.

Contribution

It extends BPMN with explicit time constraints, formalizes operational semantics with CHCs, and integrates solver-based verification, providing a novel approach for time-aware process validation.

Findings

Successfully verified properties of time-aware business processes.

Implemented the method using VeriMAP, Eldarica, and Z3 solvers.

Demonstrated effectiveness on example processes.

Abstract

We present a method for verifying properties of time-aware business processes, that is, business process where time constraints on the activities are explicitly taken into account. Business processes are specified using an extension of the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) and durations are defined by constraints over integer numbers. The definition of the operational semantics is given by a set OpSem of constrained Horn clauses (CHCs). Our verification method consists of two steps. (Step 1) We specialize OpSem with respect to a given business process and a given temporal property to be verified, whereby getting a set of CHCs whose satisfiability is equivalent to the validity of the given property. (Step 2) We use state-of-the-art solvers for CHCs to check the satisfiability of such sets of clauses. We have implemented our verification method using the VeriMAP transformation system, and the Eldarica and Z3 solvers for CHCs.