Skip to main content
Log in

Linking denotational semantics with operational semantics for web services

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Innovations in Systems and Software Engineering Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Web Services have become more and more important in these years, and BPEL4WS (BPEL) is a de facto standard for the web service composition and orchestration. It contains several distinct features, including the scope-based compensation and fault handling mechanism. The denotational semantics and operational semantics have been explored for BPEL. The two semantic models should be consistent. This paper considers the linking of these two semantics. Our approach is to derive the denotational semantics from operational semantics for BPEL, which aims for the consistency of the two models. Moreover, the derivation can be applied in exploring the program equivalence easily, especially for parallel programs.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Abrial J-R (1996) The B-Book: assigning programs to meanings. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Book  MATH  Google Scholar 

  2. Brookes SD (1996) Full abstraction for a shared-variable parallel language. Inf Comput 127(2): 145–163

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  3. Bruni R, Ferrari GL, Melgratti HC, Montanari U, Strollo D, Tuosto E (2005) From theory to practice in transactional composition of web services. In: Proceedings of EPEW/WS-FM 2005: European performance engineering workshop and international workshop on web services and formal methods, Versailles, France, September 1–3, 2005. Lecture notes in computer science, vol 3670. Springer, Berlin, pp 272–286

  4. Bruni R, Melgratti HC, Montanari U (2004) Theoretical foundations for compensations in flow composition languages. In: Proceedings of POPL 2005: 32nd ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on principles of programming languages, Long Beach, California, USA, January 12–14, 2005. ACM, New York, pp 209–220

  5. Butler M, Ripon S (2005) Executable semantics for compensating CSP. In: Proceedings of EPEW 2005: international workshop on web services and formal methods,Versailles, France, September 1–3, 2005. Lecture notes in computer science, vol 3670. Springer, Berlin, pp 243–256

  6. Butler MJ, Ferreira C (2000) A process compensation language. In: Proceedings of IFM 2000: 2nd international conference on integrated formal methods, Dagstuhl Castle, Germany, November 1–3, 2000. Lecture notes in computer science, vol 1945. Springer, Berlin, pp 61–76

  7. Butler MJ, Ferreira C (2004) An operational semantics for StAC, a language for modelling long-running business transactions. In: Proceedings of COORDINATION 2004: 6th international conference on coordination models and languages, Pisa, Italy, February 24–27, 2004. Lecture notes in computer science, vol 2949. Springer, Berlin, pp 87–104

  8. Butler MJ, Ferreira C (2004) An operational semantics for StAC, a language for modelling long-running business transactions. In: COORDINATION 2004: 6th international conference on coordination models and languages, Pisa, Italy, February 24–27, 2004. Lecture notes in computer science, vol 2949. Springer, Berlin, pp 87–104

  9. Butler MJ, Ferreira C, Ng MY (2005) Precise modelling of compensating business transactions and its application to BPEL. J Univers Comp Sci 11(5): 712–743

    Google Scholar 

  10. Butler MJ, Hoare CAR, Ferreira C (2005) A trace semantics for long-running transactions. In: Communicating sequential processes: the first 25 years, symposium on the occasion of 25 years of CSP, London, UK, July 7–8, 2004. Lecture notes in computer science, vol 3525. Springer, Berlin, pp 133–150

  11. Cerone A, Zhao X, Krishnan P (2006) Modelling and resource allocation planning of BPEL workflows under security constraints. Technical Report 336, UNU/IIST, P.O. Box 3058, Macau SAR, China, June 2006

  12. Curbera F, Goland Y, Klein J, Leymann F, Roller D, Satish Thatte M, Weerawarana S (2003) Business process execution language for web service. http://www.siebel.com/bpel

  13. de Bakker J, de Vink E (1996) Control flow semantics. The MIT Press, London

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  14. Dolev D, Yao AC (1983) On the security of public key protocols. IEEE Trans Inf Theory 29(2): 198–207

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  15. Garcia-Molina H, Salem K (1987) Sagas. In: Proceedings of ACM SIGMOD international conference on management of data, San Francisco, California, USA, May 27–29, 1987. ACM, New York, pp 249–259

  16. He J, Zhu H, Pu G (2007) A model for BPEL-like languages. Front Comp Sci China 1(1): 9–19

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Hoare CAR (1978) Communicating sequential processes. Commun ACM 21(8): 666–677

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  18. Hoare CAR (1985) Communicating sequential processes. Prentice Hall international series in computer science

  19. Hoare CAR, Hayes IJ, He J, Morgan C, Roscoe AW, Sanders JW, Sørensen IH, Spivey JM, Sufrin B (1987) Laws of programming. Commun ACM 38(8): 672–686

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Hoare CAR, He J (1993) From algebra to operational semantics. Inf Process Lett 45: 75–80

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  21. Hoare CAR, He J (1998) Unifying theories of programming. Prentice Hall international series in computer science

  22. Hoare CAR, Jifeng H, Sampaio A (1997) Algebraic derivation of an operational semantics. In: Plotkin G, Stirling C, Tofte M (eds) Proof, language and interaction: essays in honour of Robin Milner, Foundations of Computer Science series. The MIT Press, London

    Google Scholar 

  23. Laneve C, Zavattaro G (2005) Web-pi at work. In: Proceedings of TGC 2005: international symposium on trustworthy global computing, Edinburgh, UK, April 7–9, 2005. Lecture notes in computer science, vol 3705. Springer, Berlin, pp 182–194

  24. Leymann F (2001) Web services flow language (WSFL 1.0) IBM, 2001. http://www-3.ibm.com/software/solutions/webservices/pdf/WSDL.pdf

  25. Li J (2008) Web transaction modeling and its semantic analysis (in Chinese). PhD thesis, Software Engineering Institute, East China Normal University, China, June 2008

  26. Li J, He J, Pu G, Zhu H (2006) Towards the semantics for web services choreography description language. In: Proceedings of ICFEM 2006: 8th international conference on formal engineering methods, Macau, China, 29 October–3 November, 2006. Lecture notes in computer science, vol 4260. Springer, Berlin, pp 246– 263

  27. Li J, Zhu H, He J (2007) Algebraic semantics for compensable transactions. In: Proceedings of ICTAC 2007: 4th international colloquium on theoretical aspects of computing, Macau, China, 26–28 September, 2007. Lecture notes in computer science, vol 4711. Springer, Berlin, pp 306–321

  28. Li J, Zhu H, He J (2008) An observational model for transactional calculus of services orchestration. In: Proceedings of ICTAC 2008: 5th international colloquium on theoretical aspects of computing, Istanbul, Turkey, 1–3 September, 2008. Lecture notes in computer science, vol 5048. Springer, Berlin, pp 149–168

  29. Li J, Zhu H, Pu G, JH (2007) A formal model for compensable transactions. In: Proceedings of ICECCS 2007: 12th IEEE international conference on engineering of complex computer systems. IEEE Computer Society Press, pp 64–73

  30. Li J, Zhu H, Pu G, He J (2007) Looking into compensable transactions. In: Proceedings of SEW-31: 31st IEEE software engineering workshop, Baltimore, USA. IEEE Computer Society Press, pp 154–166

  31. Lucchi R, Mazzara M (2007) A pi-calculus based semantics for ws-bpel. J Logic Algebraic Program 70(1): 96–118

    Article  MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  32. Luo C, Qin S, Qiu Z (2008) Verifying bpel-like programs with hoare logic. In: Proceedings of TASE 2008: 2nd IEEE international symposium on theoretical aspects of software engineering, Nanjing, China, June 2008. IEEE Computer Society, pp 151–158

  33. McIver A, Morgan C (2004) Abstraction, refinement and proof of probability systems. Monographs in Computer Science. Springer, Berlin

    Google Scholar 

  34. Milner R (1980) A calculus of communicating systems. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 18. Springer, Berlin

    Google Scholar 

  35. Milner R (1990) Communication and concurrency. Prentice Hall International Series in Computer Science

  36. Milner R (1999) Communication and mobile system: π-calculus. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  37. Montangero C, Semini L (2006) A logical view of choreography. In: Proceedings of COORDINATION 2006: 8th international conference on coordination models and languages, Bologna, Italy, June 14–16, 2006. Lecture notes in computer science, vol 4038. Springer, Berlin, pp 179–193

  38. Moss J (1981) Nested transactions: an approach to reliable distributed computing. PhD thesis, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT, April 1981

  39. Plotkin G (2004) A structural approach to operational semantics. Technical Report 19, University of Aahus, 1981. (Also published in J Logic Algebraic Program 60–61:17–139)

  40. Pu G, Zhao X, Wang S, Qiu Z (2006) Towards the semantics and verification of BPEL4WS. Electr Notes Theoret Comp Sci 151(2): 33–52

    Article  Google Scholar 

  41. Pu G, Zhu H, Qiu Z, Wang S, Zhao X, He J (2006) Theoretical foundations of scope-based compensation flow language for web service. In: Proceedings of FMOODS 2005: 8th IFIP international conference on formal methods for open object-based distributed systems, Bologna, Italy, 14–16 June, 2006. Lecture notes in computer science, vol 4307. Springer, Berlin, pp 251–266

  42. Qiu Z, Wang S, Pu G, Zhao X (2005) Semantics of BPEL4WS-Like fault and compensation handling. In: Proceedings of FM 2005: international symposium of formal methods Europe, Newcastle, UK, July 18–22, 2005. Lecture notes in computer science, vol 3582. Springer, Berlin, pp 350–365

  43. Roscoe AW (1997) The theory and practice of concurrency. Prentice Hall International Series in Computer Science

  44. Thatte S (2001) XLANG: web service for business process design. Microsoft. http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/xml_wsspecs/xlang-c/default.html

  45. WS-CDL. http://www.w3.org/TR/ws-cdl-10/

  46. Yang H, Cai C, Peng L, Zhao X, Qiu Z (2008) Reasoning about channel passing in choreography. In: Proceedings of TASE 2008: 2nd IEEE international symposium on theoretical aspects of software engineering, Nanjing, China, June 2008. IEEE Computer Society, pp 135–142

  47. Yang H, Zhao X, Cai C, Qiu Z (2007) Exploring the connection of choreography and orchestration with exception handling and finalization/compensation. In: Proceedings of 27th IFIP international conference on formal techniques for networked and distributed systems, Tallinn, Estonia, 27–29 June, 2007, Lecture notes in computer science, vol 4574. Springer, Berlin, pp 81–96

  48. Yang H, Zhao X, Qiu Z, Cai C, Pu G (2006) Type checking choreography description language. In: Proceedings of ICFEM 2006: 8th international conference on formal engineering methods, Macau, China, 29 October–3 November, 2006, Lecture notes in computer science, vol 4260. Springer, Berlin

  49. Yang H, Zhao X, Qiu Z, Pu G, Wang S (2006) A formal model for web service choreography description language (WS-CDL). In: Proceedings of ICWS 2006: the 2006 IEEE international conference on web services. IEEE Computer Society Press, pp 893–894

  50. Zhao X, Cai C, Yang H, Qiu Z (2007) A QoS view of web service choreography. In: Proceedings of 3rd IEEE international workshop on service-oriented system engineering, Hong Kong, China, 2007. IEEE Computer Society

  51. Zhao X, Yang H, Qiu Z (2006) Towards the formal model and verification of web service choreography description language. In: Proceedings of FM-WS 2006: 3rd international workshop on web services and formal methods, Vienna, Austria, 8–9 September, 2006. Lecture notes in computer science, vol 4184. Springer, Berlin, pp 273–287

  52. Zhu H (2005) Linking the semantics of a multithreaded discrete event simulation language. PhD thesis, London South Bank University, February 2005

  53. Zhu H, He J, Bowen JP (2006) From operational semantics to denotational semantics for Verilog. In: Proceedings of ICECCS 2006: 11th IEEE international conference on engineering of complex computer systems. IEEE Computer Society Press, pp 139–151

  54. Zhu H, He J, Li J (2007) Unifying denotational semantics with operational semantics for web services. In: Proceedings of ICDCIT 2007: 4th international conference on distributed computing and internet technology, Bangalore, India, 17–20 December, 2007. Lecture notes in computer science, vol 4882. Springer, Berlin, pp 225–239

  55. Zhu H, He J, Li J, Bowen JP (2007) Algebraic approach to linking the semantics of web services. In: Proceedings of SEFM 2007: 5th IEEE international conference on software engineering and formal methods. IEEE Computer Society Press, pp 315–326

  56. Zhu H, He J, Pu G, Li J (2007) An operational approach to BPEL-like programming. In: Proceedings of SEW-31: 31st IEEE software engineering workshop, Baltimore, USA. IEEE Computer Society Press, pp 236–245

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Huibiao Zhu.

Additional information

A short version of this paper appeared in Proceedings of ICDCIT 2007: 4th International Conference on Distributed Computing and Internet Technology [54].

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Zhu, H., He, J., Li, J. et al. Linking denotational semantics with operational semantics for web services. Innovations Syst Softw Eng 6, 283–298 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11334-010-0134-z

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11334-010-0134-z

Keywords

Navigation