Key Deliverables

A list of deliverables, which document the key outcomes of S-Cube.

CD JRA 1.1.5 Analysis on how to exploit codified HCI and codified context knowledge for SBA engineering — by Osama Sammodi — last modified May 17, 2010 16:00

Deliverable CD-JRA-1.1.5 is a paper-based deliverable comprised of seven research papers. All papers deal with the exploitation of codified context knowledge. It can clearly be seen that on the one hand the different research communities interpret “context” differently ranging from HCI aspects to engineering aspects relevant for SBAs. On the other hand our analysis of the relation of the approaches to the life cycle model shows that the approaches try to integrate different phases of the life-cycle and, thus, S-Cube is now focussing more on integrated research, which covers more than one phase of the life-cycle of SBAs.

CD-IA-1.1.1 Comprehensive Overview of the State of the Art on Service-based Systems — by Andreas Gehlert — last modified May 19, 2009 10:14

This deliverable describes the state-of-the-art in service-based systems in the form of a Knowledge Model (KM) for S-Cube, explaining its purpose and its individual components. It also identifies previous approaches from related EU projects and international activities that have resulted in the definition of a large body of concepts relating to software services research. These approaches are scrutinized, adapted and reused to the extend possible as part of the S-Cube KM. In addition, it summarizes and cross-correlates the major research findings of the state-of-the-art deliverables in S-Cube, and shows how they contribute towards building an initial version of the KM. Finally, it describes the connection of the S-Cube KM to a number of knowledge sources and knowledge-intensive activities within S-Cube and its usage by both internal and external users.

CD-IA-1.1.2 Separate Knowledge Models for Functional Layers — by Benedikt Liegener — last modified May 19, 2009 10:14

This deliverable presents S-Cube’s vision for its Knowledge Model (KM) and reports on the developments to the KM content and structure since its previous version (September 2008). The major work achieved during this period was to develop a new version of the KM which builds on the previous content.

CD-IA-3.1.1 Integration Framework Baseline — by Benedikt Liegener — last modified May 19, 2009 10:13

This document describes the baseline of the S-Cube Integrated Research Framework. The objective of this framework, which will be constantly and incrementally refined and extended throughout the whole life of the project, is to provide a holistic vision that integrates, aligns and coordinates the research efforts and results of the joint research activities undertaken in JRA-1 and JRA-2. The baseline for the Integrated Research Framework described in this document consists of a set of views which define different perspectives on the S-Cube research: conceptual framework, reference life-cycle, logical run-time architecture, logical design environment. In this deliverable, we provide a description of these views and a first definition of the interfaces between the elements of the framework. We map the research efforts undertaken in the different joint research activities into these views. Finally, we define responsibilities for the different research work-packages, and relationships among them, in terms of their contributions to these views.

CD-JRA-1.1.2 Separate Design Knowledge Models for Software Engineering and Service Based Computing — by Benedikt Liegener — last modified Jun 16, 2009 14:18

This deliverable presents two distinct bodies of knowledge: the first one is for service oriented computing based on a proposed life cycle that incorporates adaptation-specific phases. Each phase is discussed in depth, and methods, techniques and tools for it are presented. Furthermore, cross-phase aspects are investigated. The other body of knowledge concerns more traditional software engineering and business process methodologies, examined from the perspective of service based applications. A number of preliminary results on the synergy between the two areas are also presented as a stepping stone for the following deliverables.

CD-JRA-1.1.4 Coordinated design knowledge models for software engineering and service-based computing — by Osama Sammodi — last modified May 17, 2010 15:59

In this deliverable, we discuss the need for the S-Cube life-cycle and the development of enhancements to support its implementation. We introduce the area of Service-Oriented Systems Engineering (SOSE) and discuss on how it is different from Traditional Software Engineering (TSE), while still recognising that both of these disciplines have important inputs to make to the development of Service-Oriented Systems. We progress with further development of the S-Cube life-cycle focusing on requirements, design and adaptation. From the requirements perspective, we investigate context-aware requirements discovery and specification, exploring whether existing models can be applied to improve requirements specification. From the design perspective, we suggest design principles and guidelines that are suitable to enable adaptation. From the adaptation perspective, we investigate SOSE and TSE to present practices for adaptation. Finally, we propose a unified formal model for dealing with the effects of iterative and localized changes between any two interacting service consumers and providers

CD-JRA-1.2.2 Taxonomy of Adaptation Principles and Mechanisms — by Benedikt Liegener — last modified Jun 16, 2009 14:19

The deliverable presents the vision on the adaptation and monitoring research highlighting the research challenges, objectives, and an integrated adaptation and monitoring framework adopted within this workpackage. Starting from this framework, the refined conceptual models and taxonomies of SBA monitoring and adaptation are provided. The deliverable also demonstrates how the presented taxonomies are instantiated across functional SBA layers and involved research disciplines.

CD-JRA-1.2.4 Integrated adaptation and monitoring principles, techniques and methodologies across functional SBA layers — by Osama Sammodi — last modified May 17, 2010 16:04

This deliverable aims to present the research progress of the project partners since the establishment of the baseline cross-layer adaptation and monitoring techniques and methodologies in deliverable PO-JRA-1.2.3. This progress was focusing on the integration of the different monitoring and adaptation approaches applied by the different layers of the service-based applications. The first integration results cover several aspects of the SBA life-cycle. These research results are presented through the summaries of joint papers of the project partners

CD-JRA-1.3.2 Quality Reference Model for SBA — by Benedikt Liegener — last modified May 19, 2009 10:10

The aim of this deliverable is two-fold. Firstly, it depicts the research vision of the workpackage, including the research challenges that will be addressed by the S-Cube consortium. Secondly, the deliverable aims at defining the S-Cube quality reference model. This reference model is intended to provide the S-Cube consortium with a unified terminology for describing different quality attributes of service-based applications. To this end, important quality models from service-oriented computing, business process management, grid computing and software engineering are analyzed. The quality attributes which are defined in these models and which are relevant for S-Cube are extracted and synthesized into the S-Cube quality reference model.

CD-JRA-1.3.3 Initial Concepts for Specifying End-to-End Quality Characteristics and Negotiating SLAs — by Osama Sammodi — last modified May 17, 2010 16:05

The aim of this deliverable is two-fold. Firstly, it aims at defining the initial concepts for specifying and negotiating end-to-end quality, i.e., a service quality meta-model suitable for the definition and negotiation of service quality specifications and SLAs. The research method for creating this quality meta-model follows a design approach. Initially, requirements are collected dictating the information, structure, and constraints that this meta-model should capture. Then, based on these requirements, the meta-model is designed and finally created. Secondly, this deliverable aims at proposing a methodology for decomposing end-to-end quality into quality specifications for individual SLAs. The research method for achieving this goal follows a hybrid approach: a proof-of-concept and a paper-based approach. In particular, the meta-model’s effectiveness and sufficiency is highlighted by modeling a composite service negotiation scenario and its result, which is a decomposition of end-to-end quality into quality specifications of individual SLAs. Then, initial attempts (materialized in papers of WP members) are provided that address (composite) service negotiation.

CD-JRA-1.3.4 Initial Set of Principles, Techniques and Methodologies for Assuring End-toend Quality and Monitoring of SLAs — by Osama Sammodi — last modified May 17, 2010 16:06

The aim of this deliverable is twofold: (1) It provides an updated overview of the research challenges of WP-JRA-1.3 (“End-to-End Quality Provision & SLA Conformance”). (2) It reports on an initial set of principles and techniques for assuring the end-to-end quality and of monitoring SLAs. Work related to these principles and techniques, carried out by S-Cube NoE participants and published in books, journals and conference proceedings, is summarized and assessed with respect to the coverage of the research challenges for this workpackage.

CD-JRA-2.1.2 Initial Models and Mechanisms for Quantitative Analysis of Correlations Between KPIs, SLAs and Underlying Business Processes — by Benedikt Liegener — last modified May 19, 2009 10:10

In this deliverable we present initial models and mechanisms for quantitative analysis of correlations between KPIs, SLAs and underlying business processes. We use service network (SN) models for quantitative analysis based on KPIs and SLAs, which enables strategic decisions for participants such as determination of optimal product prices or outsourcing decisions. In order to perform the analysis on the SN abstraction level and implement its results in operational business processes, SNs have to be connected to the BPM stack. We therefore introduce the SN4BPM architecture describing an enhanced BPM layering and lifecycle where SNs constitute a separate layer on top of the established BPM stack. In that context, we describe in particular a model-driven approach to generating abstract business process models from Service Network Models and vice versa. Finally, we deal with monitoring in the cross-organizational setting of service networks.

CD-JRA-2.1.3 Business Transaction Language — by Osama Sammodi — last modified May 17, 2010 16:07

Application integration remains one of the core drivers of innovation in service engineering. Application integration serves as a means of developing service-enabled applications based on strategic technology capable of creating and successfully executing end-to-end business processes. The trend will be to move from relatively stable, organization-specific applications to integrated, dynamic, high-value ones where process interactions and trends are examined closely to understand more accurately application needs and dynamics. Such collaborative, complex end-to-end process interactions give rise to the concept of Service Networks (SNs) (see PO-JRA-2.1.1 & PO-JRA-2.1.2). This deliverable targets the concept of a business transaction and explores how transactional processes and process fragments fit in the context of a running scenario which deals with end-to-end processes in a service network that possess transaction properties. Conventional (ACID) and unconventional (application-based) types of atomicity are introduced, including contract, payment and delivery atomicity, in the frame of a business transaction model. The transaction model provides a comprehensive set of concepts and several standard primitives and conventions that can be utilized to develop complex Service-Based Applications (SBAs) involving transactional process fragments

CD-JRA-2.2.2 Models and Mechanisms for Coordinated Service Compositions — by Benedikt Liegener — last modified May 19, 2009 10:11

This deliverable describes the research roadmap and initial research work in the context of models and mechanisms for coordinated service compositions. It provides the foundations for the research in the WP JRA-2.2 by establishing a preliminary framework for QoS-aware adaptable service compositions. We present initial research results in some areas of this framework, in particular on models of service compositions, top-down development, and monitoring and adaptation of service compositions. The work will be continued and extended in the follow-up deliverables.

CD-JRA-2.2.3 Algorithms and Techniques for Splitting and Merging Service Compositions — by Osama Sammodi — last modified May 17, 2010 16:08

This deliverable investigates techniques for split and merge of service compositions, with the emphasis on approaches that aim at optimizing costs and performance of service compositions in out- and insourcing scenarios. The deliverable provides classification criteria applicable to any split technique in the state of the art, and some novel techniques that are classified accordingly. Moreover, the deliverable presents exploratory work on merge of service compositions.

CD-JRA-2.3.3 Requirements for Service Registries in Dynamic Environments and Evaluation of Existing Service Registries — by Benedikt Liegener — last modified May 19, 2009 10:13

Web service registries are tools for the implementation of loosely-coupled service-based systems. For instance, business processes query registries in order to find services which implement functionality that is needed in the process, and adaptable service compositions need to be aware of which alternatives are available for each service. Furthermore, there is a clear interrelation between end-to-end quality provisioning and monitoring, and service registries, since SLA monitoring and enforcement is based on the availability of a service repository providing an expressive set of metadata. Even more, with the advent of the Internet of Services, an Internet-scale Web service ecosystem with unique scale and heterogeneity characteristics, a number of new challenges for the next generation of Web service registries will arise. First of all, the sheer size of the ecosystem (in terms of number of clients, providers and services) will cause a need for new scalable service discovery mechanisms built on the notions of the Internet. This includes not only discovery of atomic services, but also of task flows (ad hoc service mashups). Additionally, the distributed and heterogeneous nature of the Internet of Services asks for new data dissemination methods between physically and logically disjoint registry entities, which work in spite of missing, untrusted, inconsistent and wrong data. Further challenging requirements are going to be put forward by mobile, human-provided and ad hoc services, which are common in the Internet of Services. These services are volatile in nature, and need to be actively tracked by the service registries. Finally, another class of challenges is introduced by the human factor in the Internet of Services -- since services are often consumed and provided by humans, new means of evaluating service performance based on user-perceived and fuzzy Quality of Experience metrics need to be devised. In this deliverable we describe these requirements for the next generation of service registries for large-scale service environments in detail, and explain why we consider existing registry approaches as not sufficient for these environments. The deliverable provides the baseline research topics to be covered by the ``registry segment'' of the work package WP-JRA-2.3 in S-Cube; research questions steering the second part of the work package focussing on adaptation are described within the deliverable CD-JRA-2.3.2.

CD-JRA-2.3.2 Basic Requirements for Self-Healing Services and Decision Support for Local Adaptation — by Benedikt Liegener — last modified May 19, 2009 10:12

One of the goals of S-Cube is to look for general solutions by integrating research agendas from diverse research areas, such as business processes, service-oriented and grid computing. The world of web services already provides solutions for complex user tasks. The web service model is based on three actors: a service provider, a service requester and a service broker. There are also well established and widely used technologies that enhance the collaboration of these three parties to fulfil service executions required by users. The newly emerging demands of users and researchers call for expanding this service model with business-oriented utilization (agreement handling), support for human-provided and computation-intensive services. This evolution also affects the service infrastructure; new components appear that need to provide self-* operation. The purpose of this document is to capture the basic requirements for self-healing and decision support in service execution, deployment and runtime management for services including core services such as discovery and registries. Concerning service execution, we describe what kind of functionalities and tools should be provided at the infrastructure level in order to be able to implement a self-healing service. We restrict the scope of this document to the adaption of one service, not of a coordinated set of services. Concerning deployment and run-time management, we envision a conceptual architecture for SLA-based on-demand service provisioning and, based on this framework, three main functionalities are separated: negotiation, brokering and deployment. The document investigates the requirements in details for each of these fields. This document mainly addresses Threads C1 and C2 of the WP 2.3 research architecture and partly applies to A1 and B1. See also the companion deliverable CD-JRA-2.3.3 which addresses service discovery and registries (Thread A2, A3, B2 and B3). C3 will be addressed in deliverable CD-JRA-2.3.8.

CD-JRA-2.3.4 Decision Support for Local Adaptation — by Osama Sammodi — last modified May 17, 2010 16:09

This deliverable is aimed at summarizing the joint research in WP-JRA-2.3. related to decision support for local adaptation. It is an intermediate stage on the research roadmap, starting from issues of local adaptation and self-healing (CD-JRA-2.3.2) to the most complex case involving distributed multi-level adaptation (CD-JRA-2.3.8), where we investigate and integrate certain methods and techniques incrementally. The work is based on and motivated by the antecedent deliverable ''Basic requirements for self-healing services and decision support for local adaptation'' (CD-JRA-2.3.2) and is focused on local adaptation and decision which we consider one of the most important ways to investigate the applicability of certain policies to trigger local adaptation mechanism, and is organized around the general adaptation framework introduced in CD-JRA-2.3.2. Results are presented in 10 published papers that constitute the core contribution of this deliverable. The work is positioned within the Integrated Research Framework (IRF, WP-IA-3.1), internal WP-JRA-2.3 research architecture and overall WP-JRA-2.3 goals and visions.

PO-JRA-1.1.1 State of the art report on software engineering design knowledge and Survey of HCI and contextual knowledge — by Andreas Metzger — last modified May 19, 2009 10:08

This deliverable surveys the state of the art in all areas related to the engineering of service-based applications with particular focus on all aspects related to adaptivity. Moreover, it provides an overview of various aspects concerning the way human beings interact with each other and with the computerized systems. This second aspect, even if not directly related to the Service-Oriented Computing context is being analyzed in order to understand if it could be a good source of inspiration for new challenges and new issues for service-based applications. The deliverable provides some initial thoughts about these challenges and issues. Further analysis and research will be developed in the following of the S-Cube project.

PO-JRA-1.1.3 Codified Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Knowledge and Context Factors — by Benedikt Liegener — last modified May 19, 2009 10:08

This deliverable reports the results from preliminary, exploratory research to explore the potential impact of different types of codified HCI knowledge and context factors on the development, deployment and adaption of service-based software applications. It reports additional literature review results undertaken to inform the research, scopes and structures the preliminary research through presentation of a series of conceptual meta-models of human-computer interaction (HCI) and context concepts, then describes results of exploratory research to investigate the effect of knowledge about users, user tasks, organisational culture and user experiences on development of service-based applications. Results inform future research in this work-package through summaries that identify what types of HCI and context knowledge are more likely to effect different activities during the development and deployment of service-based applications.