The meaning of conditional output and effect

Dear all,

The meaning of precondition (in both profile and process ontology) sounds good. It presents logical conditions that should be satisfied prior to the service being requested, and there can be any number of preconditions, which must all hold in order for the process to be invoked.

But the meaning of conditional output and effect (particularly in the process ontology) seems to be ambiguity. 

Based on my understanding, it seems that:

1) A process can have any number of outputs, the information that the process provides, conditionally, after its execution. 

2) A process can have any number of effects, and effects are the result of the successful execution of a service.

3) Outputs and effects can have conditions associated with them. 


My question is as follows!

a) What's the intended meaning of the condition associated with a conditional output?

   Choice 1. if you get an output, then the condition associated with the output must be true (implied).

   Choice 2. if the condition associated with an output is evaluated to be true, then the output is **guaranteed** to be provided by the service.

   Choice 3. Neither 1, nor 2. (The condition is just a hint)

b) In the case of mutilple conditional outputs, suppose two conditions associated with two different conditional outputs are satisfied in a situation, there should exist two parts in the output? (or two outputs?) 

Furthermore, two different (co)conditions being simultaneously satisfied are allowed? or this kind of usage is discouraged in the design stage?

c) What's the intended meaning of the condition within a conditional effect?

d) How about in the case of multiple conditional effect?


Thanks for your concern!


Yuzhong Qu
Dept.Computer Science and Engineering
Southest University, Nanjing, China
http://cse.seu.edu.cn/People/yzqu/en

Received on Thursday, 2 October 2003 10:11:07 UTC