Hello,

seems to be a nice field for functional programming:

I found the following "Call For Tools" in comp.compilers:



> 
> WS-FM 2005 TOOLS SESSION
> 
> Tools session in 2nd International Workshop on Web Services and
> Formal Methods
> 
> Versailles, 2-3 September 2005, France
> 
> http://www.cs.unibo.it/WS-FM05
> 
> Web services technology is a widespread accepted instantiation of
> Service Oriented Computing which facilitates integration of newly
> built and legacy applications both within and across organizational
> boundaries avoiding difficulties due to different platform,
> heterogeneous programming languages, security firewall, etc... The
> idea behind the WS approach is allowing independently developed
> applications to be exposed as services and interconnected exploiting
> the already set up Web infrastructure with relative standards (HTTP,
> XML, SOAP and WSDL). The technologies related to developing basic
> services and interconnecting them on a point-to point basis can be
> considered well established but B2B processing requires managing
> more complex interactions involving a large number of participants
> and none of the above standards are able to meet this need. For this
> reason the so-called Web services Composition Languages like XLANG,
> WSFL, BPML, WS-BPEL and WS-CDL are taking place. These languages are
> claimed to be based on formal models (pi-calculus variants, Petri
> Nets) to allow rigorous mathematical reasoning. However, despite all
> this hype, no interesting relations with formal methods have been so
> far emphasized and no conceptual instruments for analysis and
> reasoning or software verification techniques and tools have been so
> far presented by the respective companies. Any mathematical rigor
> becomes pointless without the ability to show these kind of results.
> In this sense contracts conformance verification between different
> services and static analysis of behavioral properties becomes one of
> the most promising research directions.
> 
> The aim of the tools session is presenting working prototypes
> designed exploiting the experience derived from concurrency theory
> (and formal methods in general) in order to strengthen the
> collaboration with industry and resulting in a strong impact on the
> standardization phase of composition languages and of web services
> technologies in general.
> 
> LIST OF TOPICS
> 
> The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
> 
>     * Orchestration engines for Web services
>     * Frameworks for recovery mechanisms in Web services composition
>     * Static analyzers and verificators of behavioral properties
>     * Contracts conformance checkers
>     * Frameworks for securing Web services
> 
> SUBMISSION MODALITIES
> 
> To submit please send the information below to:
> ws-fmtools@cs.unibo.it
> 
> Submissions must include:
> 
>     * Name of the tool
>     * Name(s) of the author(s)
>     * Name(s) of the person(s) presenting the demo at the workshop
>     * A short abstract presenting the tool and the underpinning
>       theory. It should describe the way in which the theory benefits the
>       implementation.
>     * A link to a web site presenting the project.
> 
> Submissions deadline: 3  August 2005
> 
> DEMO MODALITIES
> 
> The demos presentation will be held as a special session of WS-FM
> 2005. Each presentation will take about 25 minutes plus 10 for the
> discussion.
> 
> CONTACTS
> 
>     * Mario Bravetti (bravetti@cs.unibo.it)
>     * Roberto Lucchi (lucchi@cs.unibo.it)
>     * Manuel Mazzara (mazzara@cs.unibo.it)
>     * Gianluigi Zavattaro (zavattar@cs.unibo.it)


Seems the right thing for some of the Gurus of this list. :)


Ciao,
  Oliver