print page

WSVal

Automatic Validation of Web Services

Contact Dr. Marcus Venzke
Start 1. July 2001
End 31. December 2008

Project Description

The autonomous development of components in service oriented computing requires emphasising on interface specifications. The goal of the project is to investigate the automatic validation for Web Services. By automatic validation we mean the process of checking if occurring message flows conform the their specifications. It is performed by a general purpose validator, which observes messages exchanged by communication partners and analyses the conformance to the previously read specification. This allows to immediately detect non-conformance and thus corrective actions before putting risk on the systems dependability. The automatic validation can be applied to a single interface between a pair of communication partners or to the choreography of messages exchanged between several communication partners that can be part of a composite web service.

Since available specification techniques for Web Services are either too restricted in their expressiveness or not well-suited for the automatic validation, a new specification technique "Specifications using XQuery expressions on Traces" (SXQT) is developed in the project. Extending the W3C's Web Services Description Language message-flows are constrained in a temporal and structural manner with expressions of first order logic.

Publications

Marcus Venzke. Specifications using XQuery Expressions on Traces. In Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Web Services and Formal Methods (WS-FM'04), December 2004. Pisa, Italy. Published in: Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science, Volume 105, p. 109-118, 10 December 2004.
@InProceedings{Telematik_Venzke_2004_Specifications, author = {Marcus Venzke}, editor = {Mario Bravetti and Gianluigi Zavattaro}, title = {Specifications using XQuery Expressions on Traces}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Web Services and Formal Methods (WS-FM'04)}, month = dec, year = 2004, location = {Pisa, Italy}, note = {Published in: Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science, Volume 105, p. 109-118, 10 December 2004}, }
Abstract: This paper contributes to the interoperability of web services by proposing the flexible specification technique SXQT in conjunction with the automatic validation, a straightforward approach for detecting non-conformance. SXQT allows different levels of abstraction by specifying individual requirements on a web service's protocol, i.e. its SOAP messages and behaviour including SOAP modules. The automatic validation detects non-conformance by comparing occurring message sequences with the protocol's specification.
Marcus Venzke. Spezifikation von interoperablen Webservices mit XQuery. PhD Thesis, Hamburg University of Technology, Hamburg, Germany, December 2003.
@PhdThesis{Telematik_Venzke_2003_Spezifikation, author = {Marcus Venzke}, title = {Spezifikation von interoperablen Webservices mit XQuery}, school = {Hamburg University of Technology}, address = {Hamburg, Germany}, month = dec, year = 2003, }
Abstract: The thesis solves interoperability issues regarding Web Services. The W3C standard for the specification of their interfaces (WSDL) is made more precise. This is done by developing a specification technique (SXQT), that allows specifying interfaces using expressions of first order logic (in XQuery). Compliance with such specifications is checked with the automatic validation.
Marcus Venzke. Automatic Validation of Web Services. In Proceedings of the 8th CaberNet Radicals Workshop, October 2003. Ajaccio, Corsica.
@InProceedings{Telematik_Venzke_2003_Validation, author = {Marcus Venzke}, editor = {Witold Abramowicz}, title = {Automatic Validation of Web Services}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 8th CaberNet Radicals Workshop}, day = {5-8}, month = oct, year = 2003, location = {Ajaccio, Corsica}, }
Marcus Venzke and Stefan Pitzek. Accessing Fieldbus Systems via Web Services. In Proceedings of the First Workshop on Intelligent Solutions in Embedded Systems (WISES'03), June 2003. Vienna, Austria.
@InProceedings{Telematik_VP_2003_WebServices, author = {Marcus Venzke and Stefan Pitzek}, title = {Accessing Fieldbus Systems via Web Services}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the First Workshop on Intelligent Solutions in Embedded Systems (WISES'03)}, day = {27}, month = jun, year = 2003, location = {Vienna, Austria}, }