Decomposition-based Verification of Global Compliance in Process Choreographies

Abstract

The verification of global compliance rules (GCR) in process choreographies (e.g., partner-spanning quality assurance in supply chains) is crucial and challenging due to the restricted visibility of the private processes of the collaborating partners. This paper provides a novel algorithm that decomposes global compliance rules into assertions that can be verified by the partners in a distributed way without revealing any private process details. The decomposition is based on transitivity properties of the underlying GCR specification. This work uses GCR based on antecedent and occurrence patterns and illustrates the transitivity properties based on their specification in first order predicate logic. It is formally shown that the original GCR can be reconstructed from the assertions, which ensures the viability of the approach. The algorithms are prototypically implemented and applied to several scenarios. The ability of checking global compliance constitutes a fundamental pillar of any approach implementing process choreographies with multiple partners.

Meeting the Challenges of Collaborative Network Compliance – An Exemplary View

“…To support the specification of the different process perspectives, [7], [19] presents extended Compliance Rule Graph (eCRG) i.e., an extension of CRG to visually model compliance rule and to enable the full support of multiple process perspectives regarding the control flow, data, time, and resource perspectives as well as the interactions of a process involving different partners [4]. It allows detecting compliance violations at run-time, as well as visually highlighting their causes.…”

“…It allows detecting compliance violations at run-time, as well as visually highlighting their causes. Additionally, it allows providing recommendations to users to proactively ensure a compliant continuation of a running business process [4]. The specification of an eCRG consists of a pre-condition and a postcondition.…”

“…The algorithm developed was used to detect impact of CBP changes on GCR. In [4], the authors describe how global compliance rule of process choreographies could be verified in a decentralized manner by each partner in the process collaboration and deals with the restricted visibility of process activity. The approach uses a decomposition-based approach i.e., the decomposition of GCR into a set of assertion that can be checked by each partner locally making sure the privacy of each partner is not violated.…”

“…This section looked at the decomposition approach as described in [4], [5]. The decomposition approach is applied when a GCR involves a private activity of one or several partners in a process collaboration.…”

“…Therefore, this research paper focuses on supporting the compliance of collaborative with the varied requirement from multiple process perspectives i.e., control flow, data flow, resource flow and time perspective. To support this functionality, the paper reviews an existing compliance i.e., decomposition approach [4], [5] using eCRG as a specification language. A real-world collaborative case was used to examine which compliance properties can be checked by the decomposition approach and which compliance properties cannot be checked yet.…”