Semantic constraint specification and verification of ebXML business process specifications

Electronic Business using eXtensible Markup Language (ebXML) Business Process Specification Schema (BPSS) supports the specification of the set of elements required to configure a runtime system in order to execute a set of ebXML business transactions. The BPSS is available in two stand-alone representations; a UML version and an XML version. Due to the limitations of UML notations and XML syntax, however, the current ebXML BPSS specification is insufficient to formally specify semantic constraints of modeling elements. In this study, we propose a classification scheme for BPSS semantic constraints, and describe how to represent those semantic constraints formally using Object Constraint Language. As a way to verify a particular Business Process Specification (BPS) with formal semantic constraint modeling, we suggest a rule-based approach to represent the formal semantic constraints, and describe a detail mechanism to apply the rule-based specified constraints to the BPS in a prototype implementation.