research-article

A theory of contracts for web services

Authors:

Giuseppe Castagna,

Luca PadovaniAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 43, Issue 1

Pages 261 - 272

https://doi.org/10.1145/1328897.1328471

Published: 07 January 2008 Publication History

Abstract

Contracts are behavioural descriptions of Web services. We devise a theory of contracts that formalises the compatibility of a client to a service, and the safe replacement of a service with another service. The use of contracts statically ensures the successful completion of every possible interaction between compatible clients and services.

The technical device that underlies the theory is the definition of filters, which are explicit coercions that prevent some possible behaviours of services and, in doing so, they make services compatible with different usage scenarios. We show that filters can be seen as proofs of a sound and complete subcontracting deduction system which simultaneously refines and extends Hennessy's classical axiomatisation of the must testing preorder. The relation is decidable and the decision algorithm is obtained via a cut-elimination process that proves the coherence of subcontracting as a logical system.

Despite the richness of the technical development, the resulting approach is based on simple ideas and basic intuitions. Remarkably, its application is mostly independent of the language used to program the services or the clients. We also outline the possible practical impact of such a work and the perspectives of future research it opens.

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Cited By

Bravetti MZavattaro G(2018)Foundations of Coordination and Contracts and Their Contribution to Session Type TheoryCoordination Models and Languages10.1007/978-3-319-92408-3_2(21-50)Online publication date: 27-May-2018
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92408-3_2
Bansal SBansal AGupta GBlake M(2016)Generalized semantic Web service compositionService Oriented Computing and Applications10.1007/s11761-014-0167-510:2(111-133)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s11761-014-0167-5
Caires LP�rez J(2016)Multiparty Session Types Within a Canonical Binary Theory, and Beyond36th IFIP WG 6.1 International Conference on Formal Techniques for Distributed Objects, Components, and Systems - Volume 968810.1007/978-3-319-39570-8_6(74-95)Online publication date: 6-Jun-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-319-39570-8_6
Show More Cited By

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A theory of contracts for web services

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Published In

cover image ACM SIGPLAN Notices

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 43, Issue 1

POPL '08

January 2008

420 pages

ISSN:0362-1340

EISSN:1558-1160

DOI:10.1145/1328897

Issue’s Table of Contents

POPL '08: Proceedings of the 35th annual ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming languages
January 2008
448 pages
ISBN:9781595936899
DOI:10.1145/1328438
General Chair:
George Necula
University of California, Berkeley
,
Program Chair:
Philip Wadler
University of Edinburgh

Copyright � 2008 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 07 January 2008

Published in�SIGPLAN�Volume 43, Issue 1

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Cited By

Bravetti MZavattaro G(2018)Foundations of Coordination and Contracts and Their Contribution to Session Type TheoryCoordination Models and Languages10.1007/978-3-319-92408-3_2(21-50)Online publication date: 27-May-2018
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92408-3_2
Bansal SBansal AGupta GBlake M(2016)Generalized semantic Web service compositionService Oriented Computing and Applications10.1007/s11761-014-0167-510:2(111-133)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s11761-014-0167-5
Caires LP�rez J(2016)Multiparty Session Types Within a Canonical Binary Theory, and Beyond36th IFIP WG 6.1 International Conference on Formal Techniques for Distributed Objects, Components, and Systems - Volume 968810.1007/978-3-319-39570-8_6(74-95)Online publication date: 6-Jun-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-319-39570-8_6
De Nicola RMelgratti H(2016)Multiparty Testing PreordersTrustworthy Global Computing10.1007/978-3-319-28766-9_2(16-31)Online publication date: 5-Jan-2016
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28766-9_2
Fossati LHu RYoshida N(2014)Multiparty Session NetsTrustworthy Global Computing10.1007/978-3-662-45917-1_8(112-127)Online publication date: 23-Dec-2014
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-45917-1_8
Kuang LXia YDeng SWu J(2010)Analyzing Behavioral Substitution of Web Services Based on Pi-calculusProceedings of the 2010 IEEE International Conference on Web Services10.1109/ICWS.2010.54(441-448)Online publication date: 5-Jul-2010
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ICWS.2010.54
Aalst WMooij AStahl CWolf K(2009)Service InteractionFormal Methods for Web Services10.1007/978-3-642-01918-0_2(42-88)Online publication date: 22-May-2009
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-642-01918-0_2
Stahl CMassuthe PBretschneider J(2009)Deciding Substitutability of Services with Operating GuidelinesTransactions on Petri Nets and Other Models of Concurrency II10.1007/978-3-642-00899-3_10(172-191)Online publication date: 26-Mar-2009
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-642-00899-3_10
Lopez Pombo CMontepagano PTuosto E(2024)SEArch: An�Execution Infrastructure for�Service-Based Software SystemsCoordination Models and Languages10.1007/978-3-031-62697-5_17(314-330)Online publication date: 11-Jun-2024
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Bravetti MZavattaro G(2021)Asynchronous session subtyping as communicating automata refinementSoftware and Systems Modeling10.1007/s10270-020-00838-xOnline publication date: 4-Jan-2021
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