A Case Study on Algebraic Specification of Cloud Computing

A cloud often provides a RESTful interface with which to access its services. These are usually specified through an open but informal document in the IT industry. There is no agreed standard for the specification of RESTful web services. In this paper, we propose the application of an algebraic method to the formal specification of such services and report a case study with the GoGrid's RESTful API, an industrial real system that provides Infrastructure-as-a-Service. The case study demonstrates that the algebraic approach can provide formal unambiguous specifications that are easy to read and write. It also demonstrates that formalisation can identify and eliminate ambiguity and inconsistency in informal documents.