Applying Algebraic Specification To Cloud Computing-- A Case Study of Infrastructure-as-a-Service GoGrid

Abstract

Abstract — Cloud Computing has attracted attention from both the research community and the industry. It is highly desirable to specify the syntax and semantics of the services precisely and accurately without giving away any design and implementation details. This challenge is even greater for cloud services based on RESTful web services techniques, where the invocation is through HTTP queries and there is no agreed standard exists for their specifications. In this paper, we propose an algebraic approach and apply it, as a case study, to the GoGrid Cloud Computing API. Not only does this give a formal unambiguous specification that is easy to write and understand, but it also identifies and eliminates errors in the existing documentation. Keywords-cloud computing; formal specification; algebraic specification; RESTful Web services, Infrastructure-as-a-Service I