Publishing and composition of atomicity-equivalent services for B2B collaboration

Exception handling resolves inconsistency by backward or forward error recovery methods or both in Business-to-Business (B2B) process collaboration. To avoid committing irrevocable tasks followed by exceptions, B2B processes, which guarantee the atomicity sphere property, are attractive. While atomicity sphere ensures its outcomes to be either all or nothing, conflicting local recoveries may lead to global B2B inconsistencies. Existing (global) analysis techniques however mandate every process unveiling all individual tasks. Such an analysis is infeasible when some business parties refuse to disclose their process details for privacy or business reasons. To address this problem, we propose a process algebraic technique to prove, construct, and check atomicity-equivalent public views from B2B processes. By checking atomicity spheres in the composition of these public views, business parties can identify suitable services that respect their individual and overall atomicity requirements. An example based on a real-life multilateral supply chain process is included. Copyright 2006 ACM.