This is the third research book based on the Object-Oriented Programming Systems, Languages and Applications (OOPSLA) Workshop on Behavioral Semantics. This workshop series is focused on “precise and explicit specifications of business and system semantics, independently of any (possible) realization.” The 300-page book contains 17 selected papers from the workshop, both theoretical and pragmatic, that address different aspects of the same problem. In the words of the editors: the papers are about the “understanding of business enterprises and of information systems (computer-based or not) that these enterprises rely upon.” However, I could not find the criteria that were used to select those papers in the book.

In my view, the main difficulty encountered by the editors of compilations like this is the need to keep all of the chapters on-topic. From this point of view, the editors have done reasonably well, probably due to the workshop nature of the chapters included in the book. However, the book is not subdivided into sections, and the chapters are just arranged in alphabetical order. In the words of the editors, “while it is always tempting to provide a classification for a collection of papers, once again we admit defeat.”

It is difficult to overview the contents of all the chapters in the book in a short review. Another problem with this kind of compilation is that some of the chapters may be more interesting to some readers than to others. I can only provide a short overview of the chapters that, in my opinion, are more interesting. Chapter 1, “Service-oriented Business and System Specification: Beyond Object-Orientation,” by Andrade and Fiadeiro, presents technologies intended to supplement the shortcomings of object-oriented approaches, with the purpose of moving from an identity to a service-oriented approach. In chapter 5, “.NET Contracts: Attaching Specifications to Components,” by Barnett et al., the authors demonstrate the use of AsmL to specify classes and interfaces for .NET components; this can also be used to perform runtime verification of those components. Chapter 8, “Mathematics of UML,” by Diskin, provides a good account of how to overcome the semantic problems related to unified modeling language (UML). For those dealing with the complexity inherent to building networked systems of systems, the authors of chapter 11, “Flow-Service-Quality Engineering for the Specification of Complex Systems,” by Hevner et al., propose the “flow” as a key concept. A wide view on the topic of refactoring is shown in chapter 15, “Refactoring of Programs and Specifications,” by Philipps and Rumpe. Chapter 16, “Using Information Modeling to Initiate Business Strategies,” by Sack and Thalassinidis, details how information modeling (IM) can be used to restructure and to discover new business opportunities.

I am reluctant to criticize any particular chapter here, even when I do not agree with the positions taken in some of them, mainly because they surely have been peer-reviewed before being published, so a quality standard has already been set. However, in my view, the overall book could be more reader-friendly than it is now: I realized that many chapters were full of self-citations, so the chapters are not self-contained. Some of the chapters do not have abstracts, so the reader cannot figure out if the chapter is of interest or not before reading it.

I would recommend this book to researchers in the field of rigorous specification, who also have an interest in design.