Abstract
In this paper, we consider workflows (called collaborations) involving several system components (or roles) where different components may independently start their participation in the collaboration, or terminate their participation. We consider a global workflow that is composed out of several sub-collaborations which should be executed in a specified order. For sequential execution, strict and weak sequencing have been defined. With strict sequencing all actions of the first sub-collaboration must be completed before the second sub-activity may start. Weak sequencing was introduced for sequencing distributed activities, in particular sequence diagrams, and implies only local sequencing at each system component, but no global sequencing rule. We define the semantics of a collaboration in terms of the partial order among its internal actions, and we also use partial orders to define the semantics of strict and weak sequencing of sub-collaborations. Then we concentrate on the associativity between weak and strict sequencing. Based on the given definitions, it is shown that such associativity is satisfied in most situations, however, its validity depends on certain conditions about the participation of the different system components in the sequenced sub-collaborations and on the question whether they play an initiating or terminating role in these activities. The lack of associativity may lead to ambiguities when the dynamic behavior of complex workflows is developed and specified. These difficulties can be avoided by conventions for priorities between weak or strict sequencing, and/or some appropriate bracketing structure in the workflow notation.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bochmann, G.V.: Deriving component designs from global requirements. In: Baelen, S.V., Graf, S., Filali, M., Weigert, T., Gérard, S. (eds.) Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Model Based Architecting and Construction of Embedded Systems (ACES-MB 2008). CEUR Workshop Proceedings, vol. 503, pp. 55–69 (2008)
Castejón, H., von Bochmann, G., Bræk, R.: On the realizability of collaborative services. Software & Systems Modeling 12(3), 597–617 (2013)
Gotzhein, R., Bochmann, G.V.: Deriving protocol specifications from service specifications including parameters. ACM Trans. Comput. Syst. 8(4), 255–283 (1990)
Israr, T.: Modeling and Performance Analysis of Distributed Services with Collaboration Behaviour Diagrams. Ph.D. thesis, EECS - University of Ottawa (2014)
Israr, T., Bochmann, G.V.: Performance modeling of distributed collaboration services. In: Kounev, S., Cortellessa, V., Mirandola, R., Lilja, D.J. (eds.) ICPE 2011, pp. 475–480. ACM Press (2011)
Israr, T., von Bochmann, G.: Performance modeling of distributed collaboration services with independent inputs/outpus. In: Bernardi, S., Boskovic, M., Merseguer, J. (eds.) NiM-ALP@MoDELS. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, vol. 1074, pp. 16–23. CEUR-WS.org (2013)
Laamarti, F.: Derivation of component designs from a global specification. Master’s thesis, EECS - University of Ottawa (2010)
Lamport, L.: Time, clocks, and the ordering of events in a distributed system. Commun. ACM 21(7), 558–565 (1978)
Mauw, S., Reniers, M.: High-level message sequence charts. In: Cavalli, A., Sarma, A. (eds.) SDL 1997: Time for Testing - SDL, MSC and Trends, pp. 291–306. Elsevier Science B.V. (1997)
Olderog, E.-R., Swaminathan, M.: Structural transformations for data-enriched real-time systems. In: Johnsen, E.B., Petre, L. (eds.) IFM 2013. LNCS, vol. 7940, pp. 378–393. Springer, Heidelberg (2013)
Swaminathan, M.: Private communication (2013)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this paper
Cite this paper
Bochmann, G.v. (2014). Associativity between Weak and Strict Sequencing. In: Amyot, D., Fonseca i Casas, P., Mussbacher, G. (eds) System Analysis and Modeling: Models and Reusability. SAM 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8769. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11743-0_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11743-0_7
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-11742-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-11743-0
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)