A Formal Semantics for the WS-BPEL Recovery Framework - The pi-Calculus Way

While current studies on Web services composition are mostly focused -- from the technical viewpoint -- on standards and protocols, this work investigates the adoption of formal methods for dependable composition. The Web Services Business Process Execution Language (WS-BPEL) -- an OASIS standard widely adopted both in academic and industrial environments -- is considered as a touchstone for concrete composition languages and an analysis of its ambiguous Recovery Framework specification is offered. In order to show the use of formal methods, a precise and unambiguous description of its (simplified) mechanisms is provided by means of a conservative extension of the π-calculus. This has to be intended as a well known case study providing methodological arguments for the adoption of formal methods in software specification. The aspect of verification is not the main topic of the paper but some hints are given.

[1]  Robin Milner,et al.  Communicating and mobile systems - the Pi-calculus , 1999 .

[2]  Mark Little,et al.  Web services transactions : past , present and future , 2003 .

[3]  C. Peltz,et al.  Web Services Orchestration and Choreography , 2003, Computer.

[4]  Mathias Weske,et al.  Efficient Analysis of BPEL 2.0 Processes Using p-Calculus , 2008, The 2nd IEEE Asia-Pacific Service Computing Conference (APSCC 2007).

[5]  Manuel Mazzara,et al.  A pi-calculus based semantics for WS-BPEL , 2007, J. Log. Algebraic Methods Program..

[6]  Ivan Lanese,et al.  Towards a Unifying Theory for Web Services Composition , 2006, WS-FM.

[7]  Francisco Curbera,et al.  Web Services Business Process Execution Language Version 2.0 , 2007 .

[8]  Wil M.P. van der Aalst,et al.  Pi calculus versus petri nets: let us eat humble pie rather than further inflate the Pi hype , 2005 .

[9]  Robin Milner,et al.  Functions as processes , 1990, Mathematical Structures in Computer Science.

[10]  I. Melzer.  Web Services Description Language , 2010 .

[11]  Francesco Tiezzi,et al.  A Formal Account of WS-BPEL , 2008, COORDINATION.

[12]  Mathias Weske,et al.  BPEL4Chor: Extending BPEL for Modeling Choreographies , 2007, IEEE International Conference on Web Services (ICWS 2007).

[13]  Manuel Mazzara,et al.  Towards Abstractions for Web Services Composition , 2006 .

[14]  David Spieler,et al.  Fault, Compensation and Termination in WS-BPEL 2.0 - A Comparative Analysis , 2009, WS-FM.

[15]  Wen Feng Lu,et al.  Enabling Mass Customization through Semantic Web Services , 2007 .

[16]  António Ravara,et al.  Dynamic Recovering of Long Running Transactions , 2009, TGC.

[17]  Cosimo Laneve,et al.  Foundations of Web Transactions , 2005, FoSSaCS.

[18]  D. Box,et al.  Simple object access protocol (SOAP) 1.1 , 2000 .

[19]  Manuel Mazzara,et al.  A Case Study of Web Services Orchestration , 2005, COORDINATION.