Service and Action

[Martin W Sachs <mwsachs@us.ibm.com>]

It looks to me like TP, BP, and TRP are not fully aligned with regard to
the Service and Action constructs in the TP and TRP specs.  I think we need
a discussion in Vienna

TP is using the term Business Transaction to denote a request message
perhaps followed by a response message (as distinct from a signal).  TP
uses the term Service to denote a set of related Business Transactions.  I
had thought that this corresponds to a Binary Collaboration but I see from
the BP spec that Business Transactions are directly under the root element
(ProcessSpecification).  It is not obvious to me what element groups a set
of related Business Transactions other than the root and therefore it
appears that Service is synonymous with the whole ProcessSpecification
document.

TP is using the term Action to denote a single Business Transaction within
a Service.

TRP is using the term Service to denote a single Business Transaction.

TRP is using the term Action to denote a single process within a Service.
But if a Service is a single Business Transaction, then it is not clear
that there is more than one process within a Service and therefore it isn't
clear that Action has any value.

In addition, I am having trouble discerning from the BPSS DTD where the
actual sending and receiving of messages are indicated, what the
differences are among Business Transactions and Binary Collaborations, and
how Binary Collaborations relate to Service and Action.

Regards,
Marty

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Martin W. Sachs
IBM T. J. Watson Research Center
P. O. B. 704
Yorktown Hts, NY 10598
914-784-7287;  IBM tie line 863-7287
Notes address:  Martin W Sachs/Watson/IBM
Internet address:  mwsachs @ us.ibm.com
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