A Generic Network and System Management Framework

Networks and distributed systems have formed the basis of an ongoing communications revolution that has led to the genesis of a wide variety of services. The constantly increasing size and complexity of these systems does not come without problems. In some organisations, the deployment of Information Technology has reached a state where the benefits from downsizing and rightsizing by adding new services are undermined by the effort required to keep the system running. Management of networks and distributed systems in general has a straightforward goal: to provide a productive environment in which work can be performed effectively. The work required for management should be a small fraction of the total effort. Most IT systems are still managed in an ad hoc style without any carefully elaborated plan. In such an environment the success of management decisions depends totally on the qualification and knowledge of the administrator. The thesis provides an analysis of the state of the art in the area of Network and System Management and identifies the key requirements that must be addressed for the provisioning of Integrated Management Services. These include the integration of the different management related aspects (i.e. integration of heterogeneous Network, System and Service Management). The thesis then proposes a new framework, INSMware, for the provision of Management Services. It provides a fundamental basis for the realisation of a new approach to Network and System Management. It is argued that Management Systems can be derived from a set of pre-fabricated and reusable Building Blocks that break up the required functionality into a number of separate entities rather than being developed from scratch. It proposes a high-level logical model in order to accommodate the range of requirements and environments applicable to Integrated Network and System Management that can be used as a reference model. A development methodology is introduced that reflects principles of the proposed approach, and provides guidelines to structure the analysis, design and implementation phases of a management system. The INSMware approach can further be combined with the componentware paradigm for the implementation of the management system. Based on these principles, a prototype for the management of SNMP systems has been implemented using industry standard middleware technologies. It is argued that development of a management system based on Componentware principles can offer a number of benefits. INSMware Components may be re-used and system solutions will become more modular and thereby easier to construct and maintain

On refinement of software architectures

Although increasingly popular, software component techniques still lack suitable formal foundations on top of which rigorous methodologies for the description and analysis of software architectures could be built. This paper aims to contribute in this direction: building on previous work by the authors on coalgebraic semantics, it discusses component refinement at three different but interrelated levels: behavioural, syntactic, i.e., relative to component interfaces, and architectural. Software architectures are defined through component aggregation. On the other hand, such aggregations, no matter how large and complex they are, can also be dealt with as components themselves, which paves the way to a discipline of hierarchical design. In this context, a major contribution of this paper is the introduction of a set of rules for architectural refinement. Keywords: Software component, software architecture, refinement, coalgebra.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

Building Distributed Systems for the Pragmatic Object Web

We review the growing power and capability of commodity computing and communication technologies largely driven by commercial distributed information systems. These systems are built from CORBA, Microsoft\u27s COM, JavaBeans, and rapidly advancing Web approaches. One can abstract these to a three-tier model with largely independent clients connected to a distributed network of servers. The latter host various services including object and relational databases and of course parallel and sequential computing. High performance can be obtained by combining concurrency at the middle server tier with optimized parallel back end services. The resultant system combines the needed performance for large-scale HPCC applications with the rich functionality of commodity systems. Further the architecture with distinct interface, server and specialized service implementation layers, naturally allows advances in each area to be easily incorporated. We illustrate how performance can be obtained within a commodity architecture and we propose a middleware integration approach based on JWORB (Java Web Object Broker) multi-protocol server technology. We illustrate our approach on a set of prototype applications in areas such as collaborative systems, support of multidisciplinary interactions, WebFlow based visual metacomputing, WebFlow over Globus, Quantum Monte Carlo and distributed interactive simulations

A Case Study In Software Adaptation

We attach a feedback-control-loop infrastructure to an existing target system, to continually monitor and dynamically adapt its activities and performance. (This approach could also be applied to 'new' systems, as an alternative to 'building in' adaptation facilities, but we do not address that here.) Our infrastructure consists of multiple layers with the objectives of 1. probing, measuring and reporting of activity and state during the execution of the target system among its components and connectors; 2. gauging, analysis and interpretation of the reported events; and 3. whenever necessary, feedback onto the probes and gauges, to focus them (e.g., drill deeper), or onto the running target system, to direct its automatic adjustment and reconfiguration. We report on our successful experience using this approach in dynamic adaptation of a large-scale commercial application that requires both coarse and fine grained modifications

Composition and Correctness

AbstractThis paper presents an approach to ensure correctness of composed systems. It takes into consideration that correctness can usually be achieved only to a certain degree (except for some small and very mission-critical applications) and complete specifications are usually not practicable. By modelling the parts, the composition activities and the requirements specification we automise the checking procedures using model checking. An important issue hereby is that our approach allows partial modelling and specification

How to Extend the Abstraction Refinement Model for Systems with Emergent Behavior ?

The Abstraction Refinement Model has been widely adopted since it was firstly proposed many decades ago. This powerful model of software evolution process brings important properties into the system under development, properties such as the guarantee that no extra behavior (specifically harmful behaviors) will be observed once the system is deployed. However, perfect systems with such a guarantee are not a common thing to find in real world cases, anomalies and unspecified behaviors will always find a way to manifest in our systems, behaviors that are addressed in this paper with the name "emergent behavior". In this paper, we extend the Abstract Refinement Model to include the concept of the emergent behavior. Eventually, this should enable system developers to: (i) Concretely define what an emergent behavior is, (ii) help reason about the potential sources of the emergent behavior along the development process, which in return will help in controlling the emergent behavior at early steps of the development process

Intelligent network-based early warning systems

Abstract. In this paper we present an approach for an agent-based early warning system (A-EWS) for critical infrastructures. In our approach we combine existing security infrastructures, e.g. firewalls or intrusion detection systems, with new detection approaches to create a global view and to determine the current threat state

Enterprise manager tool

Text in English; Abstract: English and TurkishIncludes bibliographical references (leaves 48)vii, 42 leavesIn this thesis we develop a new Enterprise Manager Tool with transformation data to Excel sheet capability. This is a user friendly tool.This tool gives user to access databases and database objects such as tables,views,stored procedures,they can manage databases where ever they are.With transfer to excel capability the datas can be seen more efficiently. To create this tool. NET technology and MSSQL Server is used.Enterprise Manager Tool ,kullanıcıların databaslerine ve databaselerin objelerine (table,stored procedure,view) erişebilmeleri ve bunları yönetebilmeleri için yapılmış içerisinde excel'e data transfer özelliği bulunan,windows ortamında yapılmış bir tooldur.Excel'e data transferi özelliği sayesinde kullanıcılar verilerilerini rahatlıkla Excel ortamında kullanabilirler.Tool'un geliştirilmesine Teknoloji olarak.NET Server olarakta MSSQL Server kullanılmıştır