Publications in Coordination Languages

Articles in Refereed Journals:

1. Fabrizio Montesi, Claudio Guidi, Roberto Lucchi, Gianluigi Zavattaro. JOLIE: a Java Orchestration Language Interpreter Engine. Electr. Notes Theor. Comput. Sci., Vol. 181, pages 19-33, 2007.
   Abstract: Service oriented computing is an emerging paradigm for programming distributed applications based on services. Services are simple software elements that supply their functionalities by exhibiting their interfaces and that can be invoked by exploiting simple communication primitives. The emerging mechanism exploited in service oriented computing for composing services -in order to provide more complex functionalities- is by means of orchestrators. An orchestrator is able to invoke and coordinate other services by exploiting typical workflow patterns such as parallel composition, sequencing and choices. Examples of orchestration languages are XLANG [IBM, "XLANG: Web Services for Business Process Design," http://www.gotdotnet.com/team/xml_wsspecs/xlang-c/default.htm] and WS-BPEL [OASIS, "Web Services Business Process Execution Language Version 2.0, Working Draft," http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/10347/wsbpel-specification-draft-120204.htm]. In this paper we present JOLIE, an interpreter and engine for orchestration programs. The main novelties of JOLIE are that it provides an easy to use development environment (because it supports a more programmer friendly C/Java-like syntax instead of an XML-based syntax) and it is based on a solid mathematical underlying model (developed in previous works of the authors [N. Busi, R. Gorrieri, C. Guidi, R. Lucchi and G. Zavattaro, Towards a formal framework for Choreography, in: Proc. of 3rd International Workshop on Distributed and Mobile Collaboration (DMC 2005) (2005), N. Busi, R. Gorrieri, C. Guidi, R. Lucchi and G. Zavattaro, Choreography and orchestration conformance for system design, in: Proc. of 8th International Conference on Coordination Models and Languages (COORDINATION'06), LNCS to appear, 2006, C. Guidi and R. Lucchi, Mobility mechanisms in service oriented computing, in: Proc. of 8th International Conference on on Formal Methods for Open Object-Based Distributed Systems (FMOODS'06), LNCS to appear, 2006]).

2. George A. Papadopoulos, Farhad Arbab. Coordination Models and Languages. Advances in Computers, Vol. 46, pages 330-401, 1998.
   Abstract: A new class of models, formalisms and mechanisms has recently evolved for describing concurrent and distributed computations based on the concept of "coordination". The purpose of a coordination model and associated language is to provide a means of integrating a number of possibly heterogeneous components together, by interfacing with each component in such a way that the collective set forms a single application that can execute on and take advantage of parallel and distributed systems. In this chapter we initially define and present in sufficient detail the fundamental concepts of what constitutes a coordination model or language. We then go on to classify these models and languages as either "data-driven" or "control-driven" (also called "process-" or "task-oriented"). Next, the main existing coordination models and languages are described in sufficient detail to let the reader appreciate their features and put them into perspective with respect to each other. The chapter ends with a discussion comparing the various models and some conclusions.

Articles in Refereed Conferences:

1. Johannes Maria Zaha, Alistair P. Barros, Marlon Dumas, Arthur H. M. ter Hofstede. Let's Dance: A Language for Service Behavior Modeling. OTM Conferences (1), pages 145-162, 2006.
   Abstract: In Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs), software systems are decomposed into independent units, namely services, that interact with one another through message exchanges. To promote reuse and evolvability, these interactions are explicitly described right from the early phases of the development lifecycle. Up to now, emphasis has been placed on capturing structural aspects of service interactions. Gradually though, the description of behavioral dependencies between service interactions is gaining increasing attention as a means to push forward the SOA vision. This paper deals with the description of these behavioral dependencies during the analysis and design phases. The paper outlines a set of requirements that a language for modeling service interactions at this level should fulfill, and proposes a language whose design is driven by these requirements.

2. Alistair P. Barros, Marlon Dumas, Arthur H. M. ter Hofstede. Service Interaction Patterns. Business Process Management, pages 302-318, 2005.
   Abstract: With increased sophistication and standardization of modeling languages and execution platforms supporting business process management (BPM) across traditional boundaries, has come the need for consolidated insights into their exploitation from a business perspective. Key technology developments in BPM bear this out, with several web services-related initiatives investing significant effort in the collection of compelling use cases to heighten the exploitation of BPM in multi-party collaborative environments. In this setting, we present a collection of patterns of service interactions which allow emerging web services functionality, especially that pertaining to choreography and orchestration, to be benchmarked against abstracted forms of representative scenarios. Beyond bilateral interactions, these patterns cover multilateral, competing, atomic and causally related interactions. Issues related to the implementation of these patterns using established and emerging web services standards, most notably BPEL, are discussed.

3. Samuele Carpineti, Cosimo Laneve, Paolo Milazzo. BoPi - A Distributed Machine for Experimenting Web Services Technologies. ACSD, pages 202-211, 2005.
   Abstract: BoPi is a programming language with a runtime support that allows the distribution and the execution of programs over the network. The language is a process calculus with XML values and datatypes, and with a pattern matching mechanism for deconstructing values. The compiler gives a typesafe bytecode in the form of an XML document, that may be deployed on the network. What comes out is a simple, statically typed, and formally defined core BPEL language with a basic query mechanism supplied by patterns.