Verification of GSM-based artifact-centric systems through finite abstraction

The GSM framework provides a methodology for the development of artifact-centric systems, an increasingly popular paradigm in service-oriented computing. In this paper we tackle the problem of verifying GSM programs in a multi-agent system setting. We provide an embedding from GSM into a suitable multi-agent systems semantics for reasoning about knowledge and time at the first-order level. While we observe that GSM programs generate infinite models, we isolate a large class of "amenable" systems, which we show admit finite abstractions and are therefore verifiable through model checking. We illustrate the contribution with a procurement use-case taken from the relevant business process literature. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012.