Verification support for workflow design with UML activity graphs

  • Authors:

  • Rik Eshuis;Roel Wieringa

  • Affiliations:

  • University of Twente, The Netherlands;University of Twente, The Netherlands

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Software Engineering
  • Year:
  • 2002

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Abstract

We describe a tool that supports verification of workflow models specified in UML activity graphs. The tool translates an activity graph into an input format for a model checker according to a semantics we published earlier. With the model checker arbitrary propositional requirements can be checked against the input model. If a requirement fails to hold an error trace is returned by the model checker. The tool automatically translates such an error trace into an activity graph trace by high-lighting a corresponding path in the activity graph. One of the problems that is dealt with is that model checkers require a finite state space whereas workflow models in general have an infinite state space. Another problem is that strong fairness is necessary to obtain realistic results. Only model checkers that use a special model checking algorithm for strong fairness are suitable for verifying workflow models. We analyse the structure of the state space. We illustrate our approach with some example verifications.