An abstract machine architecture for web service based business process management

We define an abstract operational model of the Business Process Execution Language for Web Service (BPEL4WS) based on the Abstract State Machine (ASM) formalism. That is, we abstractly model dynamic properties of the key language constructs through the construction of a Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) abstract machine. Specifically, we present the process execution model and the underlying execution lifecycle of BPEL activities. The goal of our work is to provide a precise and well defined semantic framework for establishing the key language attributes. To this end, the BPEL abstract machine forms a comprehensive and robust formalisation closely reflecting the view of the informal language definition.