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Business process workflow is a design conceptualization to automate the sequence of activities to achieve a business goal with involved participants and a predefined set of rules. Regarding this, a formal business workflow model is a prime requisite to implement a consistent and rigorous business process. In this context, majority of the existing research works are formalized structural features and have not focused on functional and behavioral design aspects of business processes. To address this problem, this paper aims to propose a formal model of business process workflow called as business process workflow using typed attributed graph (BPWATG) enriched with structural, functional and behavioral characteristics of business processes.

Typed attributed graph (ATG) and first-order logic have been used to formalize proposed BPWATG to provide rigorous syntax and semantics towards business process workflows. This is an effort to execute a business workflow on an automated machine. Further, the proposed BPWATG is illustrated using a case study to show the expressiveness of proposed model. Besides, the proposed graph is initially validated using generic modelling environment (GME) case tool. Moreover, a comparative study is performed with existing formal approaches based on several crucial features to exhibit the effectiveness of proposed BPWATG.

The proposed model is capable of facilitating structural, functional and behavioral aspects of business process workflows using several crucial features such as dependency conceptualization, timer concepts, exception handling and deadlock detection. These features are used to handle real-world problems and ensure the consistency and correctness of business workflows.

BPWATG is proposed to formalize a business workflow that is required to make a model of business process machine-readable. Besides, formalizations of dependency conceptualization, exception handling, deadlock detection and time-out concepts are specified. Moreover, several non-functional properties (reusability, scalability, flexibility, dynamicity, reliability and robustness) are supported by the proposed model.

The paper aims to discuss extensions of SPARQL that use regular expressions to navigate RDF graphs and may be used to answer queries considering RDFS semantics (in particular, nSPARQL and our proposal CPSPARQL).

The paper is based upon a theoretical comparison of the expressiveness and complexity of both nSPARQL and the corresponding fragment of CPSPARQL, that we call cpSPARQL.

The paper shows that nSPARQL and cpSPARQL (the fragment of CPSPARQL) have the same complexity through cpSPARQL, being a proper extension of SPARQL graph patterns, is more expressive than nSPARQL.

It has not been possible to the authors to compare the performance of our CPSPARQL implementation with other proposals. However, the experimentation has allowed to make interesting observations.

The paper includes implications for implementing the SPARQL RDFS entailment regime.

The paper demonstrates the usefulness of cpSPARQL language. In particular, cpSPARQL, which is sufficient for capturing RDFS semantics, admits an efficient evaluation algorithm, while the whole CPSPARQL language is in theory as efficient as SPARQL is. Moreover, using such a path language within the SPARQL structure allows for properly extending SPARQL.

Library‐world “languages of description” are increasingly being expressed using the resource description framework (RDF) for compatibility with linked data approaches. This article aims to look at how issues around the Dublin Core, a small “metadata element set,” exemplify issues that must be resolved in order to ensure that library data meet traditional standards for quality and consistency while remaining broadly interoperable with other data sources in the linked data environment.

The article focuses on how the Dublin Core – originally seen, in traditional terms, as a simple record format – came increasingly to be seen as an RDF vocabulary for use in metadata based on a “statement” model, and how new approaches to metadata evolved to bridge the gap between these models.

The translation of library standards into RDF involves the separation of languages of description, per se, from the specific data formats into which they have for so long been embedded. When defined with “minimal ontological commitment,” languages of description lend themselves to the sort of adaptation that is inevitably a part of any human linguistic activity. With description set profiles, the quality and consistency of data traditionally required for sharing records among libraries can be ensured by placing precise constraints on the content of data records – without compromising the interoperability of the underlying vocabularies in the wider linked data context.

In today's environment, library data must continue to meet high standards of consistency and quality, yet it must be possible to link or merge the data with sources that follow other standards. Placing constraints on the data created, more than on the underlying vocabularies, allows both requirements to be met.

This paper examines how issues around the Dublin Core exemplify issues that must be resolved to ensure library data meet quality and consistency standards while remaining interoperable with other data sources.

This chapter summarizes the library history of Hungary, with the main focus on the decades preceding the regime change in 1989. The country has been a member of the European Union since 2004. One of the consequences of joining the EU was that Hungary had to implement the three-tier system of higher education defined by the Bologna Declaration. This new system of library and information professional education and training that began in the 2006–2007 academic year is discussed in detail. The first students to begin their studies in the new, two-tier system of higher education will be awarded the BA degree in the first half of 2009. The best of them will be able to continue their studies at the MA level at one of the four universities that were approved for new MA programs in 2008.

Mobile agent, as a new mobile computing technology, has been applied to various parallel and distributed computing problem solutions. Several mobile agent systems have been built to drive the agents following a platform dependant scheme, and some formal approaches have been proposed to describe mobile agents’ behaviors or properties for respective purposes. However, there remains a lack of a standard approach to describing a mobile agent algorithm and its semantics from the viewpoint of a practical program, which makes it difficult to specify an algorithm unambiguously and verify its correctness formally. This paper proposes a practical approach to overcome that difficulty by defining a script language and associated mechanisms to specify and verify mobile agent algorithms. The language, called SMAL, can describe mobile agent’s behaviors clearly due to its explicitly defined semantics. Based on the semantics, a transformation function for converting the specified algorithm to its equivalent specification in Mobile UNITY, a well‐known mobile computation formal approach for correctness verification, is presented. Formal verification of the algorithms can be accomplished based on the UNITY‐logic rules.

A web service is a software system designed to support interoperable machine‐to‐machine or application‐to‐application interactions over networks. Descriptions enable web services to be discovered, used by other web services, and composed into new web services. Web service composition is a mechanism for creating new web services by reusing existing ones. In order to compose a web service, the right primitive services have to be discovered. A matchmaking technique enables discovering these services. Web services have functional, non‐functional, behavioral, and semantic characteristics. These four aspects of web services provide different key information about the service; therefore they have to be considered for description, matching, and composition. The purpose of this paper is to propose a formal description framework and a formal matchmaking technique that allows describing and discovering web services by considering their four characteristics.

In this paper, the description framework combines two existing languages for functional, semantic, and behavioral description, along with a simple and new language for non‐functional description.

A case study is used to illustrate the description framework and the matchmaking technique. The implementation and performance evaluation of the matchmaking technique is presented. The framework formalizes and integrates the languages in a common semantic domain in order to match and manipulate the different aspects together and formally. Isabelle is used by the matchmaking technique for discovering the partially and fully matched services.

The contribution of this paper lies in the new description framework and the new matchmaking technique.

Business process (BP) reengineering is defined as reinventing BPs either structurally or technically to achieve dramatic improvements in performance. In any business process reengineering (BPR) project, process modeling is used to reason about problems found in existing (as-is) process and helps to design target (to-be) process. BP model notation is a widely accepted standard for process modeling. “Expressiveness” and “missing formal semantics” are two problems reported to its modeling practices. In existing studies, solutions to these problems are also proposed but still have certain limitations. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

In proposed methodology, a meta-model is formally defined that is composed of commonly used modeling elements and their well-formedness rules to check for syntactic and structural correctness of process models. Proposed solution also check semantics of process models and allows to compare as-is and to-be process models for gap identification which is another important aspect of BPR. To achieve the first goal, Z specification is used to provide formal specifications of modeling constructs and their rules and Z3 (an SMT solver) is used for comparisons and verifying properties.

Proposed method addresses both “expressiveness” and “missing formal semantics” of BPR models. The results of its evaluation clearly indicate that using formally specified meta-model, BPR model is syntactically and structurally correct. Moreover, formal modeling of BPs in Z3 helped to compare processes and to check control flow properties.

Although the proposed method is tested on an example that is widely used in BPR literature, the example is only covering modeling elements which are part of the proposed subset and are reported in literature as frequently used modeling elements. A separate detailed study is required to test it on more complex systems.

Specifying process models using Z specification and Z3 solver requires certain expertise.

The proposed method adds value to BPR body of knowledge as it proposes a method to ensure structural and syntactic correctness of models, highlighting the importance of verifying run time properties and providing a direction toward comparing process models for gap analysis.

Reactive rules are used for programming rule-based Web agents, which have the ability to detect events and respond to them automatically and can have complex structure and unpredictable behavior. The aim of this paper is to provide an appropriate formal framework for analyzing such rules.

To achieve this goal, the authors give two alternative semantics for the basic reactive rules’ families which allow us to specify reactive rule-based agents and verify their intended behavior. The first approach expresses the functionality of production and event condition action rules in terms of equations, whereas the second methodology is based in the formalism of rewriting logic. Both semantics can be expressed within the framework of CafeOBJ algebraic specification language, which then offers the verification support and have their advantages and downsides.

The authors report on experiences gained by applying those methodologies in a reactive rule-based system and compare the two methodologies.

Finally, the authors demonstrate a tool that translates a set of reactive rules into CafeOBJ rewrite rules, thus making the verification of reactive rules possible for inexperienced users.

This paper aims to argue that Economics is not a neutral science.

Post-structuralist perspective of Lyotard (1984), alongside the Pragmatics of Searle (1979) and Travis (1981) are useful for analyzing enunciations in mainstream Economics.

Economists use illocutionary acts expressed in formal language to achieve perlocutionary effects. Because of the importance attached to objectivity in mainstream Economics, the use of artificial languages is preferred to natural language. However, formal language is preferred regarding its perlocutionary effects on economists' community.

This paper puts together the Continental and the Analytical Philosophy and show, in an original manner, how their intersections and how they can be useful to better understand the epistemology of Economics.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the suitability of current care pathway modelling techniques for supporting business improvement and the development of information systems. This is in the light of current UK government policies advocating the use of care pathways as part of the £12.4 billion programme for Information Technology and as a key strategy to reducing waiting times.

A qualitative analysis of the variety in purpose, syntax and semantics in a selection of existing care pathways is conducted.

Care pathways are typically modelled in an ad hoc manner with little reference to formal syntax or semantics.

The research reviews a small selection of existing pathways. The feature set used for evaluation could be further refined. Future research should examine the suitability of applying existing process modelling techniques to care pathways and explore the motivations for modelling care pathways in an ad hoc manner.

The development of care pathways can aid process improvement and the integration of information systems. However, while syntax and semantics are not standardised the impact of care pathways in the work of Department of Health agencies, in particular Connecting for Health, is likely to be limited.

The results provide insight into the limitations of the state of the art in care pathway models. This highlights a significant omission in the Department of Health's approach and identifies an important direction for further development that will aid Connecting for Health, healthcare organisations and healthcare professionals to deliver more effective services.