Semantic-based policy engineering for autonomic systems

This paper presents some important directions in the use of ontology-based semantics in achieving the vision of Autonomic Communications. We examine the requirements of Autonomic Communication with a focus on the demanding needs of ubiquitous computing environments, with an emphasis on the requirements shared with Autonomic Computing. We observe that ontologies provide a strong mechanism for addressing the heterogeneity in user task requirements, managed resources, services and context. We then present two complimentary approaches that exploit ontology-based knowledge in support of autonomic communications: service-oriented models for policy engineering and dynamic semantic queries using content-based networks. The paper concludes with a discussion of the major research challenges such approaches raise

Federated and autonomic management of multimedia services

Over the years, the Internet has significantly evolved in size and complexity. Additionally, the modern multimedia services it offers have considerably more stringent Quality of Service (QoS) requirements than traditional static services. These factors contribute to the ever-increasing complexity and cost to manage the Internet and its services. In the dissertation, a novel network management architecture is proposed to overcome these problems. It supports QoS-guarantees of multimedia services across the Internet, by setting up end-to-end network federations. A network federation is defined as a persistent cross-organizational agreement that enables the cooperating networks to share capabilities. Additionally, the architecture incorporates aspects from autonomic network management to tackle the ever-growing management complexity of modern communications networks. Specifically, a hierarchical approach is presented, which guarantees scalable collaboration of huge amounts of self-governing autonomic management components

A classification of emerging and traditional grid systems

The grid has evolved in numerous distinct phases. It started in the early ’90s as a model of metacomputing in which supercomputers share resources; subsequently, researchers added the ability to share data. This is usually referred to as the first-generation grid. By the late ’90s, researchers had outlined the framework for second-generation grids, characterized by their use of grid middleware systems to “glue” different grid technologies together. Third-generation grids originated in the early millennium when Web technology was combined with second-generation grids. As a result, the invisible grid, in which grid complexity is fully hidden through resource virtualization, started receiving attention. Subsequently, grid researchers identified the requirement for semantically rich knowledge grids, in which middleware technologies are more intelligent and autonomic. Recently, the necessity for grids to support and extend the ambient intelligence vision has emerged. In AmI, humans are surrounded by computing technologies that are unobtrusively embedded in their surroundings. However, third-generation grids’ current architecture doesn’t meet the requirements of next-generation grids (NGG) and service-oriented knowledge utility (SOKU).4 A few years ago, a group of independent experts, arranged by the European Commission, identified these shortcomings as a way to identify potential European grid research priorities for 2010 and beyond. The experts envision grid systems’ information, knowledge, and processing capabilities as a set of utility services.3 Consequently, new grid systems are emerging to materialize these visions. Here, we review emerging grids and classify them to motivate further research and help establish a solid foundation in this rapidly evolving area

Resilient Critical Infrastructure Management using Service Oriented Architecture

Abstract—The SERSCIS project aims to support the use of interconnected systems of services in Critical Infrastructure (CI) applications. The problem of system interconnectedness is aptly demonstrated by ‘Airport Collaborative Decision Making’ (ACDM). Failure or underperformance of any of the interlinked ICT systems may compromise the ability of airports to plan their use of resources to sustain high levels of air traffic, or to provide accurate aircraft movement forecasts to the wider European air traffic management systems. The proposed solution is to introduce further SERSCIS ICT components to manage dependability and interdependency. These use semantic models of the critical infrastructure, including its ICT services, to identify faults and potential risks and to increase human awareness of them. Semantics allows information and services to be described in such a way that makes them understandable to computers. Thus when a failure (or a threat of failure) is detected, SERSCIS components can take action to manage the consequences, including changing the interdependency relationships between services. In some cases, the components will be able to take action autonomously — e.g. to manage ‘local’ issues such as the allocation of CPU time to maintain service performance, or the selection of services where there are redundant sources available. In other cases the components will alert human operators so they can take action instead. The goal of this paper is to describe a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) that can be used to address the management of ICT components and interdependencies in critical infrastructure systems. Index Terms—resilience; QoS; SOA; critical infrastructure, SLA

Constraint integration and violation handling for BPEL processes

Autonomic, i.e. dynamic and fault-tolerant Web service composition is a requirement resulting from recent developments such as on-demand services. In the context of planning-based service composition, multi-agent planning and dynamic error handling are still unresolved problems. Recently, business rule and constraint management has been looked at for enterprise SOA to add business flexibility. This paper proposes a constraint integration and violation handling technique for dynamic service composition. Higher degrees of reliability and fault-tolerance, but also performance for autonomously composed WS-BPEL processes are the objectives

Autonomic care platform for optimizing query performance

Background: As the amount of information in electronic health care systems increases, data operations get more complicated and time-consuming. Intensive Care platforms require a timely processing of data retrievals to guarantee the continuous display of recent data of patients. Physicians and nurses rely on this data for their decision making. Manual optimization of query executions has become difficult to handle due to the increased amount of queries across multiple sources. Hence, a more automated management is necessary to increase the performance of database queries. The autonomic computing paradigm promises an approach in which the system adapts itself and acts as self-managing entity, thereby limiting human interventions and taking actions. Despite the usage of autonomic control loops in network and software systems, this approach has not been applied so far for health information systems. Methods: We extend the COSARA architecture, an infection surveillance and antibiotic management service platform for the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), with self-managed components to increase the performance of data retrievals. We used real-life ICU COSARA queries to analyse slow performance and measure the impact of optimizations. Each day more than 2 million COSARA queries are executed. Three control loops, which monitor the executions and take action, have been proposed: reactive, deliberative and reflective control loops. We focus on improvements of the execution time of microbiology queries directly related to the visual displays of patients' data on the bedside screens. Results: The results show that autonomic control loops are beneficial for the optimizations in the data executions in the ICU. The application of reactive control loop results in a reduction of 8.61% of the average execution time of microbiology results. The combined application of the reactive and deliberative control loop results in an average query time reduction of 10.92% and the combination of reactive, deliberative and reflective control loops provides a reduction of 13.04%. Conclusions: We found that by controlled reduction of queries' executions the performance for the end-user can be improved. The implementation of autonomic control loops in an existing health platform, COSARA, has a positive effect on the timely data visualization for the physician and nurse