Context-Aware Payment for Supply Chains: Software Architecture and Formal Verification

Lack of automation in supply chain payment systems is one of the missing points in the area of optimizations and can cause inefficiencies in the total performance of the chain. To overcome this problem, a new context-aware payment method is introduced in this paper, based on pervasive and ubiquitous computing technologies. The main architectural structure is inspired from the Service-Oriented Context Aware Middleware (SOCAM) along with the modification of existing architectures in context-aware systems. It also provides components to insure trusted interactions among members in a supply chain. A new three-layered architecture has been suggested to support this new approach. Software architecture of the proposed payment system has been specified using the Unified Modeling Language (UML) and its crucial properties making the system safe and reliable have been verified using formal methods. The verification of such approach using Temporal Logic insures its progress and overall performance of the future systems developed under this architecture.

[1]  Zohar Manna,et al.  The Temporal Logic of Reactive and Concurrent Systems , 1991, Springer New York.

[2]  Richard Anthony,et al.  Large-Scale Software Architecture: A Practical Guide using UML , 2002 .

[3]  Henny B. Sipma,et al.  STeP: The Stanford Temporal Prover (Educational Release) User''s Manual , 1995 .

[4]  es Manuel Barrio-Solórzano.  UML Automatic Verification Tool ( TABU ) , 2004 .

[5]  Matthias Baldauf,et al.  A survey on context-aware systems , 2007, Int. J. Ad Hoc Ubiquitous Comput..

[6]  C. M. Holloway.  Why engineers should consider formal methods , 1997, 16th DASC. AIAA/IEEE Digital Avionics Systems Conference. Reflections to the Future. Proceedings.

[7]  Harry Chen,et al.  An Intelligent Broker Architecture for Pervasive Context-Aware Systems , 2004 .

[8]  Werner Retschitzegger,et al.  Context-awareness on mobile devices - the hydrogen approach , 2003, 36th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2003. Proceedings of the.

[9]  Elgar Fleisch,et al.  Requirements and Technologies for Ubiquitous Payment , 2004 .

[10]  S. Gnesi,et al.  A MODEL CHECKING VERIFICATION ENVIRONMENT FOR UML STATECHARTS , 2005 .

[11]  Jani Mäntyjärvi,et al.  Managing Context Information in Mobile Devices , 2003, IEEE Pervasive Comput..

[12]  D. Salber,et al.  The Context Toolkit : Aiding the Development of Context-Aware Applications , 2000 .

[13]  A. Prasad Sistla,et al.  Safety, liveness and fairness in temporal logic , 1994, Formal Aspects of Computing.

[14]  Michael Wooldridge,et al.  On the Formal Specification and Verification of Multi-Agent Systems , 1997, Int. J. Cooperative Inf. Syst..

[15]  Diego Latella,et al.  Automatic Verification of a Behavioural Subset of UML Statechart Diagrams Using the SPIN Model-checker , 1999, Formal Aspects of Computing.

[16]  John Seely Brown,et al.  The coming age of calm technolgy , 1997 .

[17]  Jeffrey J. P. Tsai,et al.  A comparative study of formal verification techniques for software architecture specifications , 2000, Ann. Softw. Eng..

[18]  Gregory D. Abowd,et al.  The context toolkit: aiding the development of context-enabled applications , 1999, CHI '99.

[19]  Stefania Gnesi,et al.  Formal Specification and Verification of Complex Systems , 2003, FMICS.

[20]  Tao Gu,et al.  A service-oriented middleware for building context-aware services , 2005, J. Netw. Comput. Appl..

[21]  Stephan Merz,et al.  Model Checking and Code Generation for UML State Machines and Collaborations , 2002 .