Web Services technology aims at providing standard mechanisms for
describing the interface and the services available on the web, as well as protocols for locating such services and invoking them (e.g. WSDL,
UDDI, SOAP). Innovations are moving towards two main directions: The first one tends to the definition of new standards
that support the specification of complex services out of simpler ones (the so called Web Service choreography).
Several proposals have been already set up: BPML, XLANG and BizTalk, WSFL, BPEL4WS, etc...
. The second approach consists of the design of new (meta-)Web Services to be exploited at run-time by other Web Services: e.g. managing
the cooperation of Web Services or acting as dynamic registry services.
Formal methods, which provide formal machinery for representing and analysing the behavior of communicating concurrent/distributed systems,
may potentially play a fundamental role in the development of such innovations. First of all they may help in understanding the basic
mechanisms (in terms of semantics) which characterize different choreography languages and to focus on the essence of new features that
are needed. Secondly they may provide a formal basis for reasoning about Web Service semantics (behaviour and equivalence): e.g. for
realizing registry services where retrieval is based on the meaning of a service and not just a
Web Service name. Thirdly also studies on formal coordination paradigms can be exploited for developing mechanisms
for complex run-time Web Service coordination. Finally, given the importance of critical application areas for Web Services like
E-commerce, the development of the Web Service technology can certainly take advantage from formal analisys of security properties and
performance in concurrency theory.
The aim of the workshop is to bring together researchers working on Web Services and Formal Methods in order to activate a fruitful
collaboration in this direction of research. This, potentially, could also have a great impact on the current standardization phase of Web
Service technologies.
The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Protocols and standards for WS (SOAP, WSDL, UDDI, etc... )
- Languages and descripion methodologies for Coreography/Orchestration/Workflow (BPML, XLANG and BizTalk, WSFL, BPEL4WS, etc... )
- Coordination techniques for WS (transactions, agreement, coordination services, etc...)
- Semantics-based dynamic WS discovery services (based on Semantic Web/Ontology techniques or other semantic theories)
- Security, Performance Evaluation and Quality of Service of WS
- Semi-structured data and XML related technologies
- Comparisons with different related technologies/approaches
Submissions may be of two forms:
- Original papers (neither published nor submitted to other conferences/workshops)
- Contribution papers (possibly published or currently submitted)
In both cases the paper should be up to 12 pages 12 pt.
They should be submitted following the instructions at the ws-fm04
submission site.
Accepted original papers will be published in the workshop proceedings: contacts with Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science (Elsevier)
have been established to publish them as an ENTCS volume.
A time-slot will be reseved for the presentation at the workshop of a limited number of accepted contribution papers.
Moreover, full versions of papers selected among both original and contribution papers will be likely invited for publication
in a special issue of Theoretical Computer Science (Elsevier).
December 15, 2003: Submission deadline
January 26, 2004: Notification of acceptance
February 9, 2004: Pre-Final version
February 23-24, 2004: Workshop date
Mario Bravetti and Gianluigi Zavattaro
| Roberto Bruni | (University of Pisa) |
| Michael Butler | (University of Southampton) |
| Rocco De Nicola | (University of Florence) |
| Schahram Dustdar | (Wien University of Technology) |
| Gianluigi Ferrari | (University of Pisa) |
| Peter Furniss | (Choreology Ltd UK) |
| Andy Gordon | (Microsoft Reasearch Cambridge) |
| Roberto Gorrieri | (University of Bologna) |
| Stefania Gnesi | (CNR Pisa) |
| Nickolas Kavantzas | (Oracle Co. US) |
| Frank Leymann | (IBM Research Germany) |
| Fabio Martinelli | (CNR Pisa) |
| Shin Nakajima | (Hosei University and PRESTO, JST) |
| Manuel Nunez | (University Complutense of Madrid) |
| Vladimiro Sassone | (University of Sussex) |
| Friedrich Vogt | (Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg) |
Roberto Bruni, Gianluigi Ferrari, Claudio Guidi, Roberto Lucchi, Emilio Tuosto.
| Cédric Fournet | (Microsoft Reasearch Cambridge) |
| Ugo Montanari | (University of Pisa) |
|