Formal methods for service composition

Current approaches to service composition range from industrial standards (like BPEL and OWL-S) to formal methods (like Petri nets and process algebras). In this paper, we survey a number of such approaches and compare them with respect to a carefully selected set of characteristics (like exception handling and quality of services). We conclude that formal methods, often including tool support, are ideal to assist designers and developers because their use leads to increased confidence in the obtained compositions.