Towards a methodology for formal design and analysis of agent interaction protocols

Various extensions of UML have been developed to meet the challenges of designing modern software systems, such as agent-based electronic commerce applications. Recent advances in model checking technology have led it to be introduced into the development of approaches and tools to check the correctness of electronic commerce protocols. This paper focuses on the research of a method that connects an extension of AUML to model checker-SPIN/Promela for the specification and verification of agent interaction protocols (AIP) in electronic commerce. The method presented here allows us to combine the benefits of visual specification with the power of some static analysis and model checking. Some algorithms and rules are developed to permit all visual modeling constructs translated mechanically into some Promela models of AIP, as supported by the model checker-SPIN. Moreover, a process is illustrated to guide the specification and verification of AIP. The method is demonstrated thoroughly using the e-commerce protocol-NetBill as an example.