Runtime verification for business processes utilizing the Bitcoin blockchain

Prybila, Christoph; Schulte, Stefan; Hochreiner, Christoph; Weber, Ingo

doi:10.1016/j.future.2017.08.024

Cited by 112 publications

(75 citation statements)

References 34 publications

(87 reference statements)

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“…The traversal is implemented as a while loop (lines [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24]. At each iteration, one contract address is processed.…”

Section: Querying Process State and Executing Tasksmentioning

confidence: 99%

Caterpillar: A business process execution engine on the Ethereum blockchain

et al. 2019

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Summary Blockchain platforms, such as Ethereum, allow a set of actors to maintain a ledger of transactions without relying on a central authority and to deploy programs, called smart contracts, that are executed whenever certain transactions occur. These features can be used as basic building blocks for executing collaborative business processes between mutually untrusting parties. However, implementing business processes using the low‐level primitives provided by blockchain platforms is cumbersome and error‐prone. In contrast, established business process management systems (BPMSs), such as those based on the standard Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), provide convenient abstractions for rapid development of process‐oriented applications. This article demonstrates how to combine the advantages of a BPMS with those of a blockchain platform. The article introduces a blockchain‐based BPMN execution engine, named Caterpillar. Like any BPMN execution engine, Caterpillar supports the creation of instances of a process model and allows users to monitor the state of process instances and to execute tasks thereof. The specificity of Caterpillar is that the state of each process instance is maintained on the (Ethereum) blockchain and the workflow routing is performed by smart contracts generated by a BPMN‐to‐Solidity compiler. The Caterpillar compiler supports a large array of BPMN constructs, including subprocesses, multiple‐instance activities, and event handlers. The paper describes the architecture of Caterpillar and the interfaces it provides to support the monitoring of process instances, the allocation and execution of work items, and the execution of service tasks.

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“…The traversal is implemented as a while loop (lines [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24]. At each iteration, one contract address is processed.…”

Section: Querying Process State and Executing Tasksmentioning

confidence: 99%

Caterpillar: A business process execution engine on the Ethereum blockchain

et al. 2019

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“…Another related work that addresses the question of adaptability is [14], which proposes an architecture to monitor business processes on the Bitcoin platform. This approach caters for runtime adaptation, but it assumes that the process is not executed on the blockchain itself.…”

Section: Background and Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interpreted Execution of Business Process Models on Blockchain

López‐Pintado

Dumas

García‐Bañuelos

et al. 2019

2019 IEEE 23rd International Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference (EDOC)

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Blockchain technology provides a tamper-proof mechanism to execute inter-organizational business processes involving mutually untrusted parties. Existing approaches to blockchain-based process execution are based on code generation. In these approaches, a process model is compiled into one or more smart contracts, which are then deployed on a blockchain platform. Given the immutability of the deployed smart contracts, these compiled approaches ensure that all process instances conform to the process model. However, this advantage comes at the price of inflexibility. Any changes to the process model require the redeployment of the smart contracts (a costly operation). In addition, changes cannot be applied to running process instances. To address this lack of flexibility, this paper presents an interpreter of BPMN process models based on dynamic data structures. The proposed interpreter is embedded in a business process execution system with a modular multi-layered architecture, supporting the creation, execution, monitoring and dynamic update of process instances. For efficiency purposes, the interpreter relies on compact bitmap-based encodings of process models. An experimental evaluation shows that the proposed interpreted approach achieves comparable or lower costs relative to existing compiled approaches.Index Terms-Blockchain, Model-Driven Engineering, Business Process Management System, Flexible Process Execution Activity [0] Task [3] Sub-Process [5] Call-Activity [4] Multi-Instance Parallel [6] Multi-Instance Sequential [7] Default [10] User [11] Script [12] Service [13] Receive [14] Expanded [11] Collapsed [12] Event-SubProcess [13] Gateway [1] Join / Split [3] Exclusive (XOR) [4] 1 function executeElements(iDataAddr, eInd) public2 if (msg.sender != (iDataAddr or this)) 3 throw 'REJECTED' 4 iFlowAddr = IData(iDataAddr).getIFlowNode(); 5 pState = IData(iDataAddr).getSubProcessState(); 6 queue = new Queue(eInd); 7 while(!queue.isEmpty()) 8 eInd = queue.pop(); 9 (preC, postC, typeInfo) = IFlow(iFlowAddr).find(eInd); 10 if (!isEnabled(preC, typeInfo, pState)) 11 continue; 12 removeTokens(pState, preC); 13 switch (typeInfo) 14 case PARALLEL_MULTI_INST: 15 for(i = 1 to IFlow(iFlowAddr).getCountInst(eInd)) 16 this.createInst(eInd, iDataAddr);

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“…The logical correctness of smart contracts is discussed in several papers [46]- [49]. In [50] the author use Petri Nets for validating the correctness of business process expressed in BPMN notation and executed in Ethereum.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Implementation of Smart Contracts Using Hybrid Architectures with On and Off–Blockchain Components

Molina-Jiménez

Sfyrakis

Solaiman

et al. 2018

2018 IEEE 8th International Symposium on Cloud and Service Computing (SC2)

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Recently, decentralised (on-blockchain) platforms have emerged to complement centralised (off-blockchain) platforms for the implementation of automated, digital ("smart") contracts. However, neither alternative can individually satisfy the requirements of a large class of applications. On-blockchain platforms suffer from scalability, performance, transaction costs and other limitations. Off-blockchain platforms are afflicted by drawbacks due to their dependence on single trusted third parties. We argue that in several application areas, hybrid platforms composed from the integration of on-and off-blockchain platforms are more able to support smart contracts that deliver the desired quality of service (QoS). Hybrid architectures are largely unexplored. To help cover the gap, in this paper we discuss the implementation of smart contracts on hybrid architectures. As a proof of concept, we show how a smart contract can be split and executed partially on an off-blockchain contract compliance checker and partially on the Rinkeby Ethereum network. To test the solution, we expose it to sequences of contractual operations generated mechanically by a contract validator tool.

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Runtime verification for business processes utilizing the Bitcoin blockchain

Cited by 112 publications

References 34 publications

Caterpillar: A business process execution engine on the Ethereum blockchain

Caterpillar: A business process execution engine on the Ethereum blockchain

Interpreted Execution of Business Process Models on Blockchain

Implementation of Smart Contracts Using Hybrid Architectures with On and Off–Blockchain Components

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