A new approach to verify rule-based systems using Petri nets

Abstract

In the past several years, various graphical techniques were proposed to analyze various types of structural errors, including inconsistency (conflict rules), incompleteness (missing rules), redundancy (redundant rules), and circularity (circular depending rules), of rule based systems. We present a special reachability graph technique based on /spl omega/-nets (a special type of low-level Petri net) to detect all of the above types of structural errors. Our new technique is simple, efficient, and can be easily automated. We highlight the unique features of this new approach and demonstrate its application through an example.