A CPN-based Verification Method of Web Service described by OWL-S

Abstract

Web services are an important part of the Semantic Web. User and software agent should be able to discover, invoke, compose, and monitor web services with a high degree of automation. OWL-S is an ontology of services that makes these functionalities possible. However, OWL-S doesn't provide verification method for Web services. A graphical and formal modeling tool, CPN (Colored Petri Net), is suitable for solving this problem. This paper proposes a more practical verification method of Web services. We firstly transform Web services described by OWL-S to CPN models. Then we take advantage of CPN theory to analyze Web services and conclude that the CPN model must satisfy three properties for ensuring the correctness of the Web service. In addition, our approach can automatically invoke Web service in CPN model, making the verification more accurate. We also present an implementation of our approach for modeling and verifying Web Services. This implementation needs an OWL-S description of a Web service, automatically generates a CPN model and performs the desired analysis. Furthermore, the results of this research will lay the foundation for the Web services composition and evaluation.