Fresh-Variable Automata for Service Composition

To model Web services handling data from an infinite domain, or with multiple sessions, we introduce fresh-variable automata, a simple extension of finite-state automata in which some transitions are labeled with variables that can be refreshed in some specified states. We prove several closure properties for this class of automata and study their decision problems. We then introduce a notion of simulation that enables us to reduce the Web service composition problem to the construction of a simulation of a target service by the asynchronous product of existing services, and prove that this construction is computable.