Looking into the future : using timed automata to provide a priori advice about timed declarative process models

M. Westergaard, F.M. Maggi

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionAcademicpeer-review

43 Citations (Scopus)
3 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Many processes are characterized by high variability, making traditional process modeling languages cumbersome or even impossible to be used for their description. This is especially true in cooperative environments relying heavily on human knowledge. Declarative languages, like Declare, alleviate this issue by not describing what to do step by step but by defining a set of constraints between actions that must not be violated during the process execution. Furthermore, in modern cooperative business, time is of utmost importance. Therefore, declarative process models should be able to take this dimension into consideration. Timed Declare has already previously been introduced to monitor temporal constraints at runtime, but it has until now only been possible to provide an alert when a constraint has already been violated without the possibility of foreseeing and avoiding such violations. Moreover, the existing definitions of Timed Declare do not support the static detection of time-wise inconsistencies. In this paper, we introduce an extended version of Timed Declare with a formal timed semantics for the entire language. The semantics degenerates to the untimed semantics in the expected way. We also introduce a translation to timed automata, which allows us to detect inconsistencies in models prior to execution and to early detect that a certain task is time sensitive. This means that either the task cannot be executed after a deadline (or before a latency), or that constraints are violated unless it is executed before (or after) a certain time. This makes it possible to use declarative process models to provide a priori guidance instead of just a posteriori detecting that an execution is invalid.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationOn the Move to Meaningful Internet Systems: OTM 2012 (Confederated International Conferences: CoopIS, DOA-SVI, and ODBASE 2012, Rome, Italy, September 10-14, 2012. Proceedings, Part I)
EditorsR. Meersman
Place of PublicationBerlin
PublisherSpringer
Pages250-267
ISBN (Print)978-3-642-33605-8
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2013
Event20th International Conference on Cooperative Information Systems, CoopIS 2012 - Rome, Italy
Duration: 12 Sept 201214 Sept 2012
Conference number: 20

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science
Volume7565
ISSN (Print)0302-9743

Conference

Conference20th International Conference on Cooperative Information Systems, CoopIS 2012
Abbreviated titleCoopIs 2012
Country/TerritoryItaly
CityRome
Period12/09/1214/09/12
OtherCoopIS 2012

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Looking into the future : using timed automata to provide a priori advice about timed declarative process models'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this