TeamCom: A Service Creation Platform for Next Generation Networks

Theory, Tools and Applications

The Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL) is an emerging standard for specifying the behaviour of Web services at different levels of details using business process modeling constructs. It represents a convergence between Web services and business process technology. This chapter introduces the main concepts and constructs of BPEL and illustrates them by means of a comprehensive example. In addition, the chapter reviews some perceived limitations of BPEL and discusses proposals to address perceived limitations of BPEL and discusses proposals to address these limitations. The chapter also considers the possibility of applying formal methods and Semantic Web technology to support the rigorous development of service-oriented processes using BPEL.

2006

2008

Service Oriented Computing (SOC) is an emerging programming paradigm for designing interoperable applications distributed over the network. It is based upon the concept of service which is an autonomous loosely coupled interoperable platform-independent computational entity which can be dynamically discovered and composed in order to obtain different systems which achieve different tasks. Services can be accessed by public interfaces which are standardized and stored within service registers that aim at being queried by other applications for retrieving, at run-time, a specific service for a specific task. Services can be reused and replaced depending on the execution context of the specific distributed application and they can be exploited by different application systems at the same time. E-government, e-business and e-science are some examples of the IT areas where Service Oriented Computing will be exploited in the next years and, recently, big industries and consortia like Microsoft, IBM, W3C, OASIS only to mention a few, are putting several efforts for developing tools and standards for SOC applications. So far, some frameworks like Corba [OMG], Java RMI [Sun] and Web Services have been proposed in order to deal with service oriented applications. Corba and Java RMI extend the object-oriented paradigm to network applications by supplying a framework where objects can be created and accessed remotely, whereas Web Services is the most credited technology which deals with Service Oriented Computing. The Web Services are a standardized XML-based technology [W3Ca] defined by means of several specification documents developed by different organizations, consortia and industries whose most important goal is the interoperability achievement. There are three specifications that are commonly considered the cornerstone of the Web Services technology: WSDL [W3Cf], SOAP [W3Cb] and UDDI [Oasa]. The WSDL specification deals with a language which allows for the description of a Web Service interface, the SOAP specification defines a protocol for message exchanges among Web Services and the UDDI one deals with the dynamic discovery of a Web Service. Although Service Oriented Computing raises a lot of interests in the computer science and business communities, at the present, there not exists any kind of shared formal definition for SOC nor a formalization of a service oriented programming paradigm. This fact implies that the main concepts service oriented paradigm is based upon can be extracted only from practical experiences and case studies (as in [AKR + 05, CNM06, UE]), technology documentations and informal documents released by industrial consortia like in [OAS06, W3Ce]. Although the present technologies provide powerful means for dealing with SOC application design, the fact that SOC is not precisely defined in terms of formal definitions is becoming, day by day, a strong limit for its development. Features like dynamic discovery and composition indeed, need a common understanding on the basic mechanisms SOC applications are based upon in order to be achieved by different designers by exploiting different tools. Nowadays, it is possible to observe a common interest of the industrial world and the academic one to investigate formal models for describing service oriented approach [CFNS05, WCG + 06, FLB06]. To this end, conferences and workshops are organized for sharing both industrial and academic investigations such as [KLN07, ADR07] and, recently, the European Union has funded an integrated project from which this contribute comes from, that is called SENSORIA [WCG + ] and whose aim is to develop both theoretical foundations and designing tools for SOC applications.

Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Service oriented computing - ICSOC '04, 2004

Composition of software services is a fundamental part in supporting enterprise business processes. Designed properly, executable processes can be used to closely support business processes by the integration of existing software services. In order to support business processes the design of the executable process must closely follow the business events and activities, as perceived by business actors. However, the design must also consider technical issues such as limitations in existing technology and systems. In this paper we examine how technical system constraints influence the realization of business processes. Based on this examination we present a set of realization types that describes the transformation from a business process into its realization as an executable process. We also propose design criteria that need to be adhered to in order to cater to both business and technical needs.

By the use of Web Service technologies and the Internet it is possible to lay the foundation for virtual value chains that cross enterprise boundaries. As the number of services and their interaction grow, it is evident that the flow of message exchange between services needs to be coordinated in a structured way. Executable process languages such as BPEL are proposed as an instrument for the coordination of services. Executable processes must be designed such that they solve technical coordination problems as well as provide a fundament for organizations to manage and monitor the progress of the business. In this paper we examine how the design of executable processes is affected by both technical and business issues. Furthermore, we examine a set of architectures that enable the use of executable processes to cater to both business and technical needs. We provide fundamental guidelines on how to apply the architectures.

2005

The generalization of Internet continues to grow unabated, especially with the rapid adoption of the mobile and fixed wireless connecting a myriad of devices at homes and businesses. It allows us to have more and more services at low costs. In the future, anyone with any kind of devices at any times will have options to access any service from anywhere. In fulfilling this requirement, more rapid and profitable methods of service creation must be examined. This article describes a new language named SCDL (service creation description language) that can be used for service creation environment.

EMISA Forum, 2006

Abstract: BPEL is gaining increasing attention as a potential standard for the definition of executable business processes based on web services. This paper gives an overview of standardization efforts in the area of business process execution, of the main concepts of BPEL, and of its support in practice.

IEEE Concurrency, 2000

In this approach, distributed services are developed by automatically generating Java implementations from designs expressed in SDL. a specification and description language. The authors discuss SDL's characteristics, limitations, and expected future improvements in the next release.

Formal semantics and …

OASIS Standard, 2007

The WS-BPEL 2.0 specification [WS-BPEL 2.0] provides a language for formally describing business processes and business interaction protocols. WS-BPEL was designed to extend the Web Services interaction model to support business transactions. The WS-BPEL Primer is a non-normative document intended to provide an easy to read explanation of the WS-BPEL 2.0 specification. The goal of this document is to help readers understand the concepts and major components of the WS-BPEL language. This document will also assist readers in recognizing appropriate scenarios for using WS-BPEL. This document describes several features of WS-BPEL using examples and extensive references to the normative specification.