Re: design-time validation (was: Web Services Choreography Requirements 1.0 draft uploaded)

Assaf Arkin wrote:

>> Yes, you could run it through a validator of some kind, but can you 
>> write a validator that will tell you if a BPEL choreography (for 
>> example) can deadlock or not? Having it machine-readable is one thing: 
>> having interesting properties like this decidable by machine is 
>> another issue.
> 
> 
> If it's fairly simple, and most choreographies are, then you can easily 
> do that. If it's more complicated you need to break it down and use 
> heuristic and you can tell with some level of confidence. If I can 
> determine that it's most likely deadlock free, that's good enough for 
> me. It's much better than having a choreography that's prone to deadlock 
> and not knowing about it.

Ok .. but back to requirements: what restrictions does D-CR-049 
(design-time validation) place on the choreography language? You 
mentioned one: that it be machine-processable. I guess this rules out 
the suggestion that all decision logic be expressed in human language 
(since machines still don't process that very well). But you are 
stopping short of saying that deadlock be formally decidable (which I 
also do not think is reasonable).

--Jon

Received on Wednesday, 30 July 2003 17:26:59 UTC