Relational Analysis of Correlation

In service-oriented computing, correlations are used to determine links between service providers and users. A correlation contains values for some variables received in a communication. Subsequent messages will only be received when they match the values of the correlation. Correlations allow for the implementation of sessions, local shared memory, gradually provided input, or input provided in arbitrary order – thus presenting a challenge to static analysis.

In this work, we present a static analysis in relational form of correlations. It is defined in terms of a fragment of the process calculus COWS that itself builds on the Fusion Calculus. The analysis is implemented and practical experiments allow us to automatically establish properties of the flow of information between services.