From Workflow Design Patterns to Logical Specifications

Abstract

The work concerns issues related to automatic generation of logical specifications. Logical specifications can be extracted directly from developed software models. Received specification can be used in the process of a system formal verification using a deductive approach. The generated logical specification is just a set of temporal logic formulas as well as verified system properties are expressed in temporal logic. The extraction process is based on the idea of organizing the whole analyzed model as a set of certain design patterns of control flows. A method of automatic transformation of workflow design patterns to temporal logic formulas is proposed. These formulas constitute a logical specification and may be the first step towards a formal verification of system correctness using any method of the deduction-based reasoning. Applying the presented concepts enables bridging the gap between naturalness and intuitive of the deductive inference and the difficulty of its practical application in the case of software models.