Network-based business process management: embedding business logic in communications networks

Advanced Business Process Management (BPM) tools enable the decomposition of previously integrated and often ill-defined processes into re-usable process modules. These process modules can subsequently be distributed on the Internet over a variety of many different actors, each with their own specialization and economies-of-scale. The economic benefits of process specialization can be huge. However, how should such actors in a business network find, select, and control, the best partner for what part of the business process, in such a way that the best result is achieved? This particular management challenge requires more advanced techniques and tools in the enabling communications networks. An approach has been developed to embed business logic into the communications networks in order to optimize the allocation of business resources from a network point of view. Initial experimental results have been encouraging while at the same time demonstrating the need for more robust techniques in a future of massively distributed business processes.active networks;business process management;business protocols;embedded business logic;genetic algorithms;internet distributed process management;payment systems;programmable networks;resource optimization

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

Network-based business process management: embedding business logic in communications networks

Advanced Business Process Management (BPM) tools enable the decomposition of previously integrated and often ill-defined processes into re-usable process modules. These process modules can subsequently be distributed on the Internet over a variety of many different actors, each with their own specialization and economies-of-scale. The economic benefits of process specialization can be huge. However, how should such actors in a business network find, select, and control, the best partner for what part of the business process, in such a way that the best result is achieved? This particular management challenge requires more advanced techniques and tools in the enabling communications networks. An approach has been developed to embed business logic into the communications networks in order to optimize the allocation of business resources from a network point of view. Initial experimental results have been encouraging while at the same time demonstrating the need for more robust techniques in a future of massively distributed business processes

Patterns for Providing Real-Time Guarantees in DOC Middleware - Doctoral Dissertation, May 2002

The advent of open and widely adopted standards such as Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) [47] has simplified and standardized the development of distributed applications. For applications with real-time constraints, including avionics, manufacturing, and defense systems, these standards are evolving to include Quality-of-Service (QoS) specifications. Operating systems such as Real-time Linux [60] have responded with interfaces and algorithms to guarantee real-time response; similarly, languages such as Real-time Java [59] include mechanisms for specifying real-time properties for threads. However, the middleware upon which large distributed applications are based has not yet addressed end-to-end guarantees of QoS specifications. Unless this challenge can be met, developers must resort to ad hoc solutions that may not scale or migrate well among different platforms. This thesis provides two contributions to the study of real-time Distributed Object Computing (DOC) middleware. First, it identifies potential bottlenecks and problems with respect to guaranteeing real-time performance in contemporary middleware. Experimental results illustrate how these problems lead to incorrect real-time behavior in contemporary middleware platforms. Second, this thesis presents designs and techniques for providing real-time QoS guarantees in DOC middleware in the context of TAO [6], an open-source and widely adopted implementation of real-time CORBA. Architectural solutions presented here are coupled with empirical evaluations of end-to-end real-time behavior. Analysis of the problems, forces, solutions, and consequences are presented in terms of patterns and frame-works, so that solutions obtained for TAO can be appropriately applied to other real-time systems

Converting CORBA Based Fault Management to SNMP

Vianhallinta pitää sisällään toimia, joilla havaitaan, eristetään ja korjataan tietoliikenneverkon epänormaaleja toimintoja. ITU-T:n tietoliikenteen hallintaverkkoarkkitehtuuri koostuu viidestä tasosta, joista kaksi alimmaista, elementinhallintataso sekä verkkoelementtitaso, keskittyvät verkkoelementtien hallintaan. Useita protokollia on hyödynnetty vianhallintaan näillä tasoilla. CORBA-pohjainen vianhallinta on ollut yleinen 3GPP:n ratkaisusarjaa hyödyntävissä verkkoelementeissä ja elementinhallintajärjestelmissä. Mutta tietoliikenneteollisuuden siirtyessä kohti all-IP-maailmaa, SNMP on jälleen uudelleen vahvistamassa asemaansa hallitsevana verkkoelementtien monitorointiprotokollana. Täten verkkonsa vianhallinnan yhdenmukaistamista tutkiva verkko-operaattori voisi harkita CORBA-pohjaisten verkkoelementtiensä konvertointia käyttämään SNMP:tä. Tämä työ tutkii tämänkaltaisen konversion edellytyksiä ja yksityiskohtia. Kirjallisuustutkimuksella otetaan selvää vianhallinnan eri puolista ja vertaillaan CORBA:a ja SNMP:tä konvertterin suunnittelua varten. Todiste konversiokonseptin toimivuudesta saadaan yksinkertaistetun implementaation avulla. Implementaatio osoittaa konvertterin olevan melko helposti rakennettavissa, ja että konvertteri voi toimia joko CORBA:n tai SNMP:n toimintaperiaatteella. Konvertteri mahdollistaa vianhallinnan yhdenmukaistamisen lisäämättä huomattavaa viivettä, rasitusta kaistaleveyskäytölle tai kuluttamatta runsaasti muistiresursseja. Tämän työn tulokset antavat aihetta esitettyjen konseptien laajemmalle tutkimukselle, sekä konvertterin laajentamiselle kattamaan konfiguraation hallinnan. Tähän tosin SNMP ei ehkä ole suositelluin protokolla.Fault management involves tasks to enable the detection, isolation and correction of abnormal operation of the telecommunication network. Telecommunications management network architecture of ITU-T consists of five layers, of which the bottom two, the element management layer and the network element layer, are focused on the management of network elements. For fault management tasks at these layers, several protocols have been utilised. CORBA based fault management has been common in network elements and element management systems utilising solution sets of 3GPP. But as the telecommunications industry moves towards an all-IP world, SNMP has yet again become the predominant protocol for monitoring network elements. A network operator looking into unifying the fault management of its network could consider converting the CORBA based network element to using SNMP. This thesis studies the requirements and details of this kind of conversion. With a literary study, aspects of fault management and comparison of CORBA and SNMP are scoped for designing a CORBA-SNMP converter. A proof of concept for the conversion is obtained with a simplified implementation. The implementation shows that a converter is quite easy to construct, and the converter can perform with operating principle of either CORBA or SNMP. The converter is also able to provide fault management unification without adding considerable delay, strain on bandwidth usage or consuming memory resources. The results of this thesis give grounds for studying the proposed concepts further and also broaden the converter to cover configuration management. Though for configuration management SNMP may not be the preferred protocol

An Investigation Into the Mechanisms That Allow CORBA to Preserve Strong Typing

The Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) is a middleware specification. It aims at transparently extending programming languages to enable access to objects that are situated in different address spaces. Extending strongly typed languages raises the question whether the extension happens in a type-safe way. Claims are commonly made in the popular literature that this is indeed the case. However, this is not immediately clear from the specification. This thesis is an investigation into the different mechanisms that CORBA specifies to support remote operation invocations and a discussion of whether these mechanisms preserve type-safety for cross-boundary operation invocations. Successively, the object model, the type system, the architecture and the development process are reviewed. This is followed by a detailed investigation into the communications protocol used by CORBA, the server-side request dispatching mechanism and client-side operation invocation mechanisms. Conclusions drawn from these investigations are used to discuss type equivalence and the issues around interface evolution

A distributed intelligent network based on CORBA and SCTP

The telecommunications services marketplace is undergoing radical change due to the rapid convergence and evolution of telecommunications and computing technologies. Traditionally telecommunications service providers’ ability to deliver network services has been through Intelligent Network (IN) platforms. The IN may be characterised as envisioning centralised processing of distributed service requests from a limited number of quasi-proprietary nodes with inflexible connections to the network management system and third party networks. The nodes are inter-linked by the operator’s highly reliable but expensive SS.7 network. To leverage this technology as the core of new multi-media services several key technical challenges must be overcome. These include: integration of the IN with new technologies for service delivery, enhanced integration with network management services, enabling third party service providers and reducing operating costs by using more general-purpose computing and networking equipment. In this thesis we present a general architecture that defines the framework and techniques required to realise an open, flexible, middleware (CORBA)-based distributed intelligent network (DIN). This extensible architecture naturally encapsulates the full range of traditional service network technologies, for example IN (fixed network), GSM-MAP and CAMEL. Fundamental to this architecture are mechanisms for inter-working with the existing IN infrastructure, to enable gradual migration within a domain and inter-working between IN and DIN domains. The DIN architecture compliments current research on third party service provision, service management and integration Internet-based servers. Given the dependence of such a distributed service platform on the transport network that links computational nodes, this thesis also includes a detailed study of the emergent IP-based telecommunications transport protocol of choice, Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP). In order to comply with the rigorous performance constraints of this domain, prototyping, simulation and analytic modelling of the DIN based on SCTP have been carried out. This includes the first detailed analysis of the operation of SCTP congestion controls under a variety of network conditions leading to a number of suggested improvements in the operation of the protocol. Finally we describe a new analytic framework for dimensioning networks with competing multi-homed SCTP flows in a DIN. This framework can be used for any multi-homed SCTP network e.g. one transporting SIP or HTTP

Evaluation of Corba for use in distributed control systems

The Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA)-based Simulator was a Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) project that applied simulation techniques to explore critical questions about advanced distributed control system architectures. A three-prong approach comprised of a study of object-oriented distribution tools, computer network modeling, and simulation of key control system scenarios was used in the LDRD project. This input report describes the first of the three approaches Ñ the study of object-oriented distribution tools together with measurements, and predictions of use within the National Ignition Facility (NIF) and some aspects of CORBA which remain to be resolved. For the ICCS, the completeness of suitable functionality, the speed of performance and utilization of machine and network resources, and the developing nature of the commercial CORBA products themselves, presented a certain risk. This LDRD thus evaluated CORBA in general, and a particular implementation, to determine its features, performance, and scaling properties, and to optimize its use within the ICCS. Both UNIX and real-time operating systems were studied