12th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming Brussels, Belgium, July 20 - 24, 1998
	Workshop W6

Second ECOOP Workshop on Precise Behavioral Semantics (with an Emphasis on OO Business Specifications)

Business specifications are essential to describe and understand businesses (and, in particular, business rules) independently of any computing systems used for their possible automation. They have to express this understanding in a clear, precise, and explicit way, in order to act as a common ground between business domain experts and software developers. They also provide the basis for reuse of concepts and constructs ('patterns') common to all or a large number of, businesses, and in doing so save intellectual effort, time and money. Precise specification of semantics - as opposed to just signatures - is essential not only for business specifications, but also for business designs and system specifications. In particular, it is needed for appropriate handling of viewpoints essential for human understanding of both business and computer systems. It is the aim of the workshop to bring together theoreticians and practitioners to report about their experience with making semantics precise (perhaps even formal) and explicit in OO business specifications, business designs, software and system specifications.