RE: [wsbpel] Issue 42 - Proposal to vote

["Satish Thatte" <satisht@microsoft.com>]

I agree with the resolution Peter proposed.  Formalisms work is most interesting in surfacing ambiguities and irregularities in the process of construction of the formal model rather than in being the primary guide to interpretation or implementation.  There is a precedent in the development of the formal semantics of the ITU-T standard SDL-2000.  It is primarily for this reason that we should encourage the work in this direction.
 
Professor Uwe Glaesser at Simon Fraser University has been leading one such effort for BPEL.  Professor Glaesser was also a principal author of the SDL-2000 formal modelling work.  He and his team may be able to update us on the latest results of their work on BPEL.
 
Satish

________________________________

From: Furniss, Peter [mailto:Peter.Furniss@choreology.com]
Sent: Fri 2/20/2004 4:00 AM
To: Furniss, Peter; wsbpel@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: [wsbpel] Issue 42 - Proposal to vote


This is perhaps the proposal of the ignorant, since I'm really a biologist :-), but I was involved with OSI Transaction Processing standard, which had four more or less equivalent definitions: procedural text; state tables; Lotos; Estelle.  The two formalisms took up 60% or so of the document, and were used only be very limited groups. Implementors (such as there were :-( ) used the first two.   I heard of another standard (not in OSI) that included formalisms and took over seven years to reach completion !
 
 
Peter

	-----Original Message-----
	From: Furniss, Peter 
	Sent: 20 February 2004 11:20
	To: wsbpel@lists.oasis-open.org
	Subject: [wsbpel] Issue 42 - Proposal to vote
	
	
	Proposal: Close without change to the specification
	 
	Rationale: Although the use and definitions of formalisms can be useful in understanding and defining a specification, including such in a formal description as normative in a specification that is also in natural language and less formal expressions has the drawbacks:
	 
	a) it is a very large effort, and can significantly delay the completion of the specification
	b) formal specifications tend to be understood only by a few and many of the subject-area experts will use and think in terms of the non-formal description, in development of both the specification and implementations.
	c) if there is conflict between the formal and non-formal which is to have precedence ?
	 
	Separate formal descriptions of bpel, not included in the specification and without normative authority are to be encouraged.