An Executable Axiomatization of the REA2 Ontology

What is it about?

This paper could be considered a proof of concept for incorporating run-time business rule checking in software. This is particularly relevant to smart contracts as there is no central authority to check business rules ex-ante and reverting (erroneous or illegal) transactions in a blockchain is at least cumbersome. Additionally, the ontology-based model-driven engineering approach with integrated coherence checking has the potential to make smart contracts and software in general more robust through transparence and validation, as the approach presented in this paper uses an ontology as a platform independent model, replacing a conceptual model that is potentially created by a single modeler by an ontology, which is shared within, supported by and validated by a community. Moreover, replacing manual coding by a code generator, replaces the model interpretation of a single programmer with a set of validated transformation rules, which makes model-to-code or model-to-contract transformation more transparent and less error-prone.

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