Issues about the Adoption of Formal Methods for Dependable Composition of Web Services

Abstract

Web Services provide interoperable mechanisms for describing, locating and invoking services over the Internet; composition further enables to build complex services out of simpler ones for complex B2B applications. While current studies on these topics are mostly focused - from the technical viewpoint - on standards and protocols, this article investigates the adoption of formal methods, especially for composition. The authors logically classify and analyze three different (but interconnected) kinds of important issues towards this goal, namely foundations, verification and extensions. The aim of this work is to individuate the proper questions on the adoption of formal methods for dependable composition of Web Services, not necessarily to find the optimal answers. Nevertheless, the authors still try to propose some tentative answers based on our proposal for a composition calculus, which they hope can animate a proper discussion.