Re: [wsbpel] abstract process strawman

[<andrew.francis@mail.mcgill.ca>]

Hello:

> As promised, here is the abstract process strawman
>document I have been putting together. This work aspired
>to define a consistent view of abstract processes  and
>their use as the basis for continuted discussion
>and concrete proposals/resolutions.

(I sent this e-mail yesterday, but it bounced)

I read over the strawman document. Some questions.

Observably Conformant:

Is "observably conformant" related to the notion
of "observational equivalence" used in distributed systems
literature? Perhaps a future strawman paper could cite
references? (I would have liked to see references with
regards to Issue Ten)

"Export":

It is not clear to me how "export" is used? An
accompanying illustration in plain English would be nice.

I will assume a common "export" scenario would be:

I have written a BPEL process for selling widgets.
Based on my concrete BPEL process, I would derive and
export an abstract BPEL process that my partners would
use to buy widgets from me through my concrete BPEL
process.

"Tracing Semantics":

I will assume that "tracing" semantics refers to the notion
of execution traces, again used in distributed protocol and
concurrency literature.
I am not an expert on the subject, so perhaps I am
off-track, but here goes:

I have been under the impression that an (exported)
abstract process should provide just enough information
to describe "legal" execution traces (or histories)
between itself and and its partners.

In turn, I don't care how the parties actually instanciate
the abstract BPEL process (i.e., the abstract BPEL processcould be translated into another language that is compiled
into an executable). Is this thinking correct?

Cheers,
Andrew