Choreography-related definitions in the Web Services Glossary

As per my action item, please find below some choreography-related
definitions that the Web Services Architecture Working Group came up
with during their discussion as food for thoughts.

The latest editor's copy at:

  http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/~checkout~/2002/ws/arch/glossary/wsa-glossary.html?rev=1.36&content-type=text/html#choreographydefs

lists:

   choreography
          
          Editorial note                                            
   Definition in progress: the above definition was the original
   proposal.                                                    
            
          The specification of the ordering of messages from one node's
          perspective or a collection of nodes. May or may not include
          Turing complete logic in determination of the message exchange
          pattern.
          
   declarative
          
          Editorial note      
          Needs to be formalized.
   
          says move down x lines and place a string foobar. In reality,
          the domain must specify what "lines" are and what happens when
          a string is placed.
          
   procedural
          
          Editorial note      
          Needs to be formalized.
   
          it separates information from the presentation domain making it
          more reusable.
          
   Turing complete
          @@@
          
   abstract (choreography) business processes
          These are definitions that are designed to describe the
          ordering of business activities that send and/or receive
          messages. The definition of the flow between activities is not
          computationally complete (i.e., it cannot be executed). All of
          the messages are between independent business entities
          (participants). The participants may be across companies or
          within a company. There are two types of these processes:   
          interface business processes and collaboration business   
          processes.
                    
   interface business processes
          This is an abstract business process that defines how outside
          participants can expect to interact with a service of a
          business entity. This service can be implemented as any type of
          application, including an executable business process. If the  
          interface is for an executable business process, then all
          activities within the interface business process will also
          exist within the executable business process-that is, the
          interface business process will be a sub-set of the executable
          business process. Example of specifications to define these 
          types of processes: WSCI and the abstract part of BPEL4WS.  
          
   collaboration business processes
          This is an abstract business process that defines how two or
          more interface business processes interact with each other.
          Even if these business processes were executable, there could
          be no central control mechanism that could run one of these
          processes. These processes are dependent on the implementations
          of the interface business processes to act in coordination.
          Example of specifications to define these types of processes:
          WSCI global model and BPSS.
          
   executable (orchestration) business processes
          These are definitions that are designed to describe the
          ordering of business activities that send and/or receive
          messages. The definition of the flow between activities is
          computationally complete (i.e., it can be executed). The
          messages may be sent to/from: a) an independent business entity
          to itself and b) an independent business entity to another
          (participant). These could be called internal or workflow
          business processes. The business activities that interact with
          another participant will also appear in a derived abstract
          business process. In fact, the definition of an executable
          business process is a superset of the definition of an abstract
          business process. Example of specifications to define these
          types of processes: executable part of BPEL4WS and BPML.

Note that there wasn't consensus on these definitions.

Regards,

Hugo

-- 
Hugo Haas - W3C
mailto:hugo@w3.org - http://www.w3.org/People/Hugo/

Received on Friday, 14 March 2003 15:05:28 UTC