Conformance checking of service behavior

ABSTRACT

A service-oriented system is composed of independent software units, namely services, that interact with one another exclusively through message exchanges. The proper functioning of such system depends on whether or not each individual service behaves as the other services expect it to behave. Since services may be developed and operated independently, it is unrealistic to assume that this is always the case. This article addresses the problem of checking and quantifying how much the actual behavior of a service, as recorded in message logs, conforms to the expected behavior as specified in a process model. We consider the case where the expected behavior is defined using the BPEL industry standard (Business Process Execution Language for Web Services). BPEL process definitions are translated into Petri nets and Petri net-based conformance checking techniques are applied to derive two complementary indicators of conformance: fitness and appropriateness. The approach has been implemented in a toolset for business process analysis and mining, namely ProM, and has been tested in an environment comprising multiple Oracle BPEL servers.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.5 Testing and Debugging
          Subjects: Diagnostics

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.5 Testing and Debugging
          Subjects: Monitors; Distributed debugging

  H. Information Systems
  H.3 INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
      H.3.4 Systems and Software
          Subjects: Distributed systems; Information networks
  H.4 INFORMATION SYSTEMS APPLICATIONS
      H.4.1 Office Automation
          Subjects: Workflow management

General Terms:
Languages, Management, Theory, Verification

Keywords:
BPEL, Petri nets, ProM, Web services, conformance