Web Services and Formal Methods

This volumecontainstheproceedingsofthe 5thInternationalWorkshoponWeb Services and Formal Methods (WS-FM 2008) held during September 4-5, 2008 in Milan, Italy, co-located with the 6th International Conference on Business Process Management (BPM 2008). Previous editions of the workshop were held in Pisa,Italy (WS-FM 2004),Versailles,France(WS-FM 2005),Vienna, Austria (WS-FM 2006) and Brisbane, Australia (WS-FM 2007). The aim of the workshop series is to bring together researchers working on web servicesand formal methods in order to catalyzefruitful collaboration. Web service (WS) technology provides standard mechanisms and protocols for - scribing,locatingandinvokingservicesavailableallovertheweb. Existinginfr- tructuresalreadyenableprovidersto describeservicesintermsoftheirinterface, accesspolicyandbehavior,andto combinesimpler servicesintomorestructured andcomplexones. However,researchisstillneededto moveWStechnologyfrom skilled handcrafting to well-engineeredpractice. Formal methods can play a f- damental role in the shaping of such innovations. For instance, they can help us de?ne unambiguous semantics for the languages and protocols that underpin existing WS infrastructures, and provide a basis for checking the conformance and compliance of bundled services. The WS-FM series has a strong tradition of attracting submissions on formal approaches to enterprise systems modeling in general,and business processmodeling in particular. Potentially,this couldhave a signi?cant impact on the on-going standardization e?orts for WS technology. The main topics of the workshop include: formal approaches to servi- orientedanalysisanddesign,to enterprisemodeling and business processmod- ing; WS coordination and transactions frameworks; formal comparison of di?- ent models proposed for WS protocols and standards; types and logics for WS; goal-drivenandsemantics-baseddiscoveryandcompositionofWS;model-driven development, testing, and analysis of WS; security, performance and quality of services; innovative application scenarios for WS.