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Information Systems Modeling: Language, Verification, and Tool Support

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Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE 2019)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 11483))

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Abstract

Information and processes are both important aspects of information systems. Nevertheless, most existing languages for modeling information systems focus either on one or the other. Languages that focus on information modeling often neglect the fact that information is manipulated by processes, while languages that focus on processes abstract from the structure of the information. In this paper, we present an approach for modeling and verification of information systems that combines information models and process models using an automated theorem prover. In our approach, set theory and first-order logic are used to express the structure and constraints of information, while Petri nets of a special kind, called Petri nets with identifiers, are used to capture the dynamic aspects of the systems. The proposed approach exhibits a unique balance between expressiveness and formal foundation, as it allows capturing a wide range of information systems, including infinite state systems, while allowing for automated verification, as it ensures the decidability of the reachability problem. The approach was implemented in a publicly available modeling and simulation tool and used in teaching of Information Systems students.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Related materials can be found at: http://informationsystem.org/ismsuite/.

  2. 2.

    \(\mathbb {N}\) denotes the set of all natural numbers, i.e., \(\mathbb {N}= \{1, 2, 3, \ldots \}\), set \(\mathbb {N}^0 = \mathbb {N}\cup \{0\}\).

  3. 3.

    The source code is available from https://github.com/information-systems/ismsuite.

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Acknowledgment

Artem Polyvyanyy was partly supported by the Australian Research Council Discovery Project DP180102839.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, 3010, Australia

    Artem Polyvyanyy

  2. Utrecht University, Princetonplein 5, 3584 CC, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Jan Martijn E. M. van der Werf, Sietse Overbeek & Rick Brouwers

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  1. Artem Polyvyanyy
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  2. Jan Martijn E. M. van der Werf
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  3. Sietse Overbeek
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  4. Rick Brouwers
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Correspondence to Artem Polyvyanyy .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Trento, Trento, Italy

    Paolo Giorgini

  2. University of St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland

    Barbara Weber

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Polyvyanyy, A., van der Werf, J.M.E.M., Overbeek, S., Brouwers, R. (2019). Information Systems Modeling: Language, Verification, and Tool Support. In: Giorgini, P., Weber, B. (eds) Advanced Information Systems Engineering. CAiSE 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11483. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21290-2_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21290-2_13

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