Semantic task specification in business process context

Abstract

Much like semantic service specification, semantic specification of tasks in business processes is needed, e.g., for their formal verification. In addition to the specification of the pure effects of some procedural code, however, business context plays a major role for semantic task specification. Open questions are how to include the business context of a task in its semantic specification, and what the semantic specification of a task composition is. This paper clarifies the relation of service composition with corresponding task composition in different business context using semantic specification. It shows that a specific semantic service task specification may become a supertype of the corresponding semantic service specification. Hence, it provides a theoretical basis for the reusability of (Web) services in different business contexts. This paper also presents a systematic derivation of the semantic specification of sequential task composition. Based on all that, it shows recursive application for higher-level business processes.