Key Deliverables

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

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-1.2.2 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-1.3.2 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-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-2.2.2 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-2.3.3 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.

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.

PO-JRA-1.2.1 State of the Art Report, Gap Analysis of Knowledge on Principles, Techniques and Methodologies for Monitoring and Adaptation of SBAs — by Andreas Metzger — last modified Aug 06, 2009 10:08

The deliverable presents the state-of-the-art principles, techniques, and methodologies for the monitoring and adaptation of Service-Based Applications. The report also includes an overview of the different kinds of adaptation and monitoring principles and mechanisms, provides a classification of the existing approaches from the literature, and makes a comparison with the state-of-the-art approaches in other related areas of information systems.

PO-JRA-1.3.1 Survey of quality related aspects relevant for SBAs — by Andreas Metzger — last modified May 19, 2009 10:09

Quality related aspects relevant for service-based applications cover a broad field of research, including work on quality modeling, QoS and SLA negotiation, as well as constructive and analytical quality assurance (like testing, monitoring and static analysis). This deliverable provides a survey of this broad field of “service quality” and identifies the key areas where research contributions are currently available. Based on this survey of the state of the art, important and emerging research challenges are identified that could be pursued in the future in order to close several of the gaps which emerge from the current state of the art on “service quality”.

PO-JRA-2.1.1 State-of-the-art survey on business process modelling and Management — by Andreas Metzger — last modified May 19, 2009 10:10

In its simplest form, Business Process Management (BPM) is a suite of software technologies focusing on the management of the complete lifecycle of a business process. To date, most BPM deployments have been narrow in scope, adopting an organization-centric view and providing only improvements in specific business functions. As a result, current BPM suites only enable organizations to enhance their existing processes. The next-generation of service-enabled BPM will serve as a means of developing mission-critical applications based on strategic technology capable of creating and executing crossenterprise collaborative business processes and business-aware transactions, so that organizations can deploy, monitor, and continuously update cross-enterprise functions within a mixed environment of people, content, and systems. Such collaborative, complex end-to-end service interactions give raise to the concept of Agile Service Networks. In this report, we assess the state-of-the-art in BPM, surveying the basic concepts, describe the features, techniques and enabling technologies necessary for making BPM a reality and explain the need for service-based BPM. The report also highlights the need for moving from a relatively static and organization-centric view of BPM to a much more dynamic, highvalue one based on Agile Service Networks.

PO-JRA-2.2.1 Overview of the state of the art in composition and coordination of services — by Andreas Metzger — last modified May 19, 2009 10:11

This deliverable presents a survey on the state-of-the-art in service composition. The report is structured into three main sections. First, different models and languages for service composition are described. These involve service orchestration, choreography, wiring, coordination, and semantic WS composition. The next part evaluates approaches to creation and development of service compositions, including model-driven, automated, and QoS-aware service composition. Finally, formal methods to verification of service compositions are presented. Each section starts with an introduction and classification of the approaches and then describes the main contributions in the corresponding area.

PO-JRA-2.3.1 Use Case Description and State-of-the-Art — by Andreas Gehlert — last modified May 19, 2009 10:12

The aim of this document is to introduce the most important aspects and the state-of-the-art of self-* infrastructures and service registry, binding and invocation. The property commonly referred as self-* is a collection of one or more reflexive properties expressing the ability of changing some aspects of the working behaviour of a computing entity. They are surveyed as self-optimisation and self-healing in a numerical simulation example; autonomic brokering; dynamic self-deployment of services; dynamic adaptation, self-optimisation, self-healing and self-configuration in a mobile environment. Software systems built on top of Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) use a triangle of the three operations "publish", and "bind" in order to decouple the participants in the system. Key elements of the survey are Service Discovery (centralised vs. distributed, keyword-based, signature-based, semantics-based and context-based approaches), QoS-based service discovery, Dynamic Binding and Dynamic Invocation.