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Transactions on Large-Scale Data- and Knowledge-Centered Systems XXXI pp 94–123Cite as

Contractual Specifications of Business Services: Modeling, Formalization and Proximity

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((TLDKS,volume 10140))

Abstract

Business services arguably play a central role in service-based information systems as they would fill in the gap between the technicality of Service-Oriented Architecture and the business aspects captured in Enterprise Architecture. Business services have distinctive features that are not typically observed in Web services, e.g. significant portions of the functionality of business services might be executed in a human-mediated fashion. The representation of business services requires that we view human activity and human-mediated functionality through the lens of computing and systems engineering. Contractually specifying a business service is crucial for the design and operationalization of business services from the service providers’ point of view. In this article, we present an overarching modeling and formalization approach to the contractual specifications of business services. First, business services are conceptually described from three different perspectives, giving rise to a list of service descriptors that matter most for the contractual specifications of services. Second, we formalize the service descriptors. Third, we devise a formal machinery to (a) verify if a group of services contractually match the specification of the bulkier service in question; (b) to assess the contractual proximity of service groups relative to a contractual service specification to help decide which combination of services from a catalog best realize the desired functionality.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    By calling them business services, we mean services happening between people or business entities. They are enabled by IT in one way or another. For the sake of simplicity, we shall use the term “business service” or simply “service” to refer to these IT-enabled business services throughout this paper.

  2. 2.

    Theoretically, we could have up 27 points in this space. The nine points listed here make the most significant meaning when combining the three modeling perspectives.

  3. 3.

    The service costs (or payment) can straightforwardly be extracted from text as they are simply numeric.

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Acknowledgment

The first author would like to thank my former colleague, Aditya Ghose, for his valuable feedback on this work, especially in the formalization of service goals and goal entailment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering, HCMC University of Technology, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

    Lam-Son Lê, Trung-Viet Nguyen, Thai-Minh Truong & Khuong Nguyen-An

  2. Faculty of Information Technology, Can Tho University of Technology, Can Tho City, Vietnam

    Trung-Viet Nguyen

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  1. Lam-Son Lê
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  2. Trung-Viet Nguyen
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  3. Thai-Minh Truong
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  4. Khuong Nguyen-An
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Correspondence to Lam-Son Lê .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. IRIT, Paul Sabatier University, Toulouse, France

    Abdelkader Hameurlain

  2. FAW, University of Linz, Linz, Austria

    Josef Küng

  3. FAW, University of Linz, Linz, Austria

    Roland Wagner

  4. Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

    Tran Khanh Dang

  5. Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

    Nam Thoai

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Lê, LS., Nguyen, TV., Truong, TM., Nguyen-An, K. (2017). Contractual Specifications of Business Services: Modeling, Formalization and Proximity. In: Hameurlain, A., Küng, J., Wagner, R., Dang, T., Thoai, N. (eds) Transactions on Large-Scale Data- and Knowledge-Centered Systems XXXI. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10140. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-54173-9_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-54173-9_5

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