Comparing Drools and Ontology Reasoning Approaches for Automated Monitoring in Telecommunication Processes

AbstractAutomated reconfiguration is one of the crucial tasks in telecommunication service composition. The first step in reconfiguration is the monitoring phase. The problem of monitoring and error detection frequently appears in different telecommunications architectures. This article describes the main components of the architecture for monitoring module in AUTO framework. The monitoring approach is based on semantic technologies and ITIL framework. Equally, this paper presents an analysis and comparison of two approaches for the implementation of the module: Drools and semantic formalism. The results of this study may be applicable to other telecommunication domains

Rule-based monitoring and error detecting for converged telecommunication processes

Convergent process may be defined as a composition of services which integrates functionalities from Web and Telecommunication domains. However, during execution of convergent processes some services may fail; in such cases a reconfiguration process must be triggered to recover normal behaviour of composite process. Previous works have developed mechanisms for reducing reconfiguration time while initial restrictions are maintained; this is achieved by replacing regions of services instead of individual services. The present work presents an approach for monitoring and error detecting in convergent processes using rule production systems based on ITIL model. The approach was tested in the monitoring module of the AUTO framework, whose architecture and performance are discussed to show that this approach can efficiently detect errors and repair convergent processes in telecom environments

Requirements-driven self-optimization of composite services using feedback control

In an uncertain and changing environment, a composite service needs to continuously optimize its business process and service selection through runtime adaptation. To achieve the overall satisfaction of stakeholder requirements, quality tradeoffs are needed to adapt the composite service in response to the changing environments. Existing approaches on service selection and composition, however, are mostly based on quality preferences and business processes decisions made statically at the design time. In this paper, we propose a requirements-driven self-optimization approach for composite services. It measures the quality of services (QoS), estimates the earned business value, and tunes the preference ranks through a feedback loop. The detection of unexpected earned business value triggers the proposed self-optimization process systematically. At the process level, a preference-based reasoner configures a requirements goal model according to the tuned preference ranks of QoS requirements, reconfiguring the business process according to its mappings from the goal configurations. At the service level, selection decisions are optimized by utilizing the tuned weights of QoS criteria. We used an experimental study to evaluate the proposed approach. Results indicate that the new approach outperforms both fixed-weighted and floating-weighted service selection approaches with respect to earned business value and adaptation flexibility

Management of service composition based on self-controlled components

International audienceCloud computing and Future Internet promise a new ecosystem where everything is "as a service", reachable and connectable anywhere and anytime, everyone succeeding to get a service composition that meets his needs. But do we have the structure and the appropriate properties to design the service components and do we have the means to manage, at run-time, the personalised compositions corresponding to Service Level Agreement? In this article we introduce an entity of service composition called Self-Controlled Component (SCC), including, since the design step, functional and non-functional specifications. SCCs benefit both from the strong structure, explicit composition, and autonomic management of component-oriented programming, from the highly dynamic composition, and from the discovery capacities of service-oriented computing. Self-control mechanisms are then attached automatically to SCCs to enable autonomic application management during execution. The objective of this new concept is to provide strong Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees of composed applications. We illustrate the approach using an example called Springoo, to how in the context of a legacy application the contributions and benefits of our solution. For the management of the service composition we propose the concept of Virtual Private Service Network (VPSN) and Virtual Service Community (VSC) that allows us to model the personalised Service Level Agreement (SLA) where user requirements and provider offers converge on a QoS contract

Cross-Layer Platform for Dynamic, Energy-Efficient Optical Networks

The design of the next-generation Internet infrastructure is driven by the need to sustain the massive growth in bandwidth demands. Novel, energy-efficient, optical networking technologies and architectures are required to effectively meet the stringent performance requirements with low cost and ultrahigh energy efficiencies. In this thesis, a cross-layer communications platform is proposed to enable greater intelligence and functionality on the physical layer. Providing the optical layer with advanced networking capabilities will facilitate the dynamic management and optimization of optical switching based on performance monitoring measurements and higher-layer attributes. The cross-layer platform aims to create a new framework for networks to incorporate packet-scale measurement subsystems and techniques for monitoring the health of the optical channel. This will allow for quality-of-service- and energy-aware routing schemes, as well as an enhanced awareness of the optical data signals. This thesis first presents the design and development of an optical packet switching fabric. Leveraging a networking test-bed environment to validate networking hypotheses, advanced switching functionalities are demonstrated, including the support for quality-of-service based routing and packet multicasting. The investigated cross-layering is based on emerging optical technologies, enabling packet protection techniques and packet-rate switching fabric reconfiguration. Coupled with fast performance monitoring, the platform will achieve significant performance gains within the endeavor of all-optical switching. Allowing for a more intelligent, programmable optical layer aims to support greater flexibility with respect to bandwidth allocation and potentially a significant reduction in the network's energy consumption. The ultimate deliverable of this work is a high-performance, cross-layer enabled optical network node. The experimental demonstration of an initial prototype creates a dynamic network element with distributed control plane management, featuring fast packet-rate optical switching capabilities and embedded physical-layer performance monitoring modules. The cross-layer box enables an intelligent traffic delivery system that can dynamically manipulate optical switching on a packet-granular scale. With the goal of achieving advanced multi-layer routing and control algorithms, the network node requires an intelligent co-optimization across all the layers. The proposed cross-layer design should drive optical technologies and architectures in an innovative way, in order to fulfill the void between the design of basic photonic devices and the networking protocols that use them. The performance of the entire network -- from the optical components, to the routing algorithms and user applications -- should be optimized in concert. This contribution to the area of cross-layer network design creates an adaptable optical pipe that is extremely flexible and intelligent aware of both the physical optical signals and higher-layer requirements. The impact of this work will be seen in the realization of dynamic, energy-efficient optical communication links in future networking infrastructures

A Real-Time Service-Oriented Architecture for Industrial Automation

Industrial automation platforms are experiencing a paradigm shift. New technologies are making their way in the area, including embedded real-time systems, standard local area networks like Ethernet, Wi-Fi and ZigBee, IP-based communication protocols, standard service oriented architectures (SOAs) and Web services. An automation system will be composed of flexible autonomous components with plug & play functionality, self configuration and diagnostics, and autonomic local control that communicate through standard networking technologies. However, the introduction of these new technologies raises important problems that need to be properly solved, one of these being the need to support real-time and quality-of-service (QoS) for real-time applications. This paper describes a SOA enhanced with real-time capabilities for industrial automation. The proposed architecture allows for negotiation of the QoS requested by clients from Web services, and provides temporal encapsulation of individual activities. This way, it is possible to perform an a priori analysis of the temporal behavior of each service, and to avoid unwanted interference among them. After describing the architecture, experimental results gathered on a real implementation of the framework (which leverages a soft real-time scheduler for the Linux kernel) are presented, showing the effectiveness of the proposed solution. The experiments were performed on simple case studies designed in the context of industrial automation applications

Towards automated composition of convergent services: a survey

A convergent service is defined as a service that exploits the convergence of communication networks and at the same time takes advantage of features of the Web. Nowadays, building up a convergent service is not trivial, because although there are significant approaches that aim to automate the service composition at different levels in the Web and Telecom domains, selecting the most appropriate approach for specific case studies is complex due to the big amount of involved information and the lack of technical considerations. Thus, in this paper, we identify the relevant phases for convergent service composition and explore the existing approaches and their associated technologies for automating each phase. For each technology, the maturity and results are analysed, as well as the elements that must be considered prior to their application in real scenarios. Furthermore, we provide research directions related to the convergent service composition phases

Academic Panel: Can Self-Managed Systems be trusted?

Trust can be defined as to have confidence or faith in; a form of reliance or certainty based on past experience; to allow without fear; believe; hope: expect and wish; and extend credit to. The issue of trust in computing has always been a hot topic, especially notable with the proliferation of services over the Internet, which has brought the issue of trust and security right into the ordinary home. Autonomic computing brings its own complexity to this. With systems that self-manage, the internal decision making process is less transparent and the ‘intelligence’ possibly evolving and becoming less tractable. Such systems may be used from anything from environment monitoring to looking after Granny in the home and thus the issue of trust is imperative. To this end, we have organised this panel to examine some of the key aspects of trust. The first section discusses the issues of self-management when applied across organizational boundaries. The second section explores predictability in self-managed systems. The third part examines how trust is manifest in electronic service communities. The final discussion demonstrates how trust can be integrated into an autonomic system as the core intelligence with which to base adaptivity choices upon