Eliciting the End-to-End Behavior of SOA Applications in Clouds

Availability and performance are key issues in SOA cloud applications. Those applications can be represented as a graph spanning multiple Cloud and on-premises environments, forming a very complex computing system that supports increasing numbers and types of users, business transactions, and usage scenarios. In order to rapidly find, predict, and proactively prevent root causes of issues, such as performance degradations and runtime errors, we developed a monitoring solution which is able to elicit the end-to-end behavior of those applications. We insert lightweight components into SOA frameworks and clients thereby keeping the monitoring impact minimal. Monitoring data collected from call chains is used to assist in issues related to performance, errors and alerts, as well as business and IT transactions

Development of a framework to evaluate service-oriented architecture governance using COBIT approach

Nowadays organizations require an effective governance framework for their service-oriented architecture (SOA) in order to enable them to use a framework to evaluate their current state governance and determine the governance requirements, and then to offer a suitable model for their governance. Various frameworks have been developed to evaluate the SOA governance. In this paper, a brief introduction to the internal control framework COBIT is described, and it is used to show how to develop a framework to evaluate the SOA governance within an organization. The SOA and information technology expert surveys are carried out to evaluate the proposed framework. The results of this survey verify the proposed framework

Privacy-preserved security-conscious framework to enhance web service composition

The emergence of loosely coupled and platform-independent Service-Oriented Computing (SOC) has encouraged the development of large computing infrastructures like the Internet, thus enabling organizations to share information and offer valueadded services tailored to a wide range of user needs. Web Service Composition (WSC) has a pivotal role in realizing the vision of implementing just about any complex business processes. Although service composition assures cost-effective means of integrating applications over the Internet, it remains a significant challenge from various perspectives. Security and privacy are among the barriers preventing a more extensive application of WSC. First, users possess limited prior knowledge of security concepts. Second, WSC is hindered by having to identify the security required to protect critical user information. Therefore, the security available to users is usually not in accordance with their requirements. Moreover, the correlation between user input and orchestration architecture model is neglected in WSC with respect to selecting a high performance composition execution process. The proposed framework provides not only the opportunity to securely select services for use in the composition process but also handles service users’ privacy requirements. All possible user input states are modelled with respect to the extracted user privacy preferences and security requirements. The proposed approach supports the mathematical modelling of centralized and decentralized orchestration regarding service provider privacy and security policies. The output is then utilized to compare and screen the candidate composition routes and to select the most secure composition route based on user requests. The D-optimal design is employed to select the best subset of all possible experiments and optimize the security conscious of privacy-preserving service composition. A Choreography Index Table (CIT) is constructed for selecting a suitable orchestration model for each user input and to recommend the selected model to the choreographed level. Results are promising that indicate the proposed framework can enhance the choreographed level of the Web service composition process in making adequate decisions to respond to user requests in terms of higher security and privacy. Moreover, the results reflect a significant value compared to conventional WSC, and WSC optimality was increased by an average of 50% using the proposed CIT

Design and development of a solution for QoS support in the FIWARE IoT architecture

Now-days Internet of things (IoT) is changing the Internet vision. IoT architectures are employed in our daily lives in many applications and in a ubiquitous way. Tech- nological advancements together with cloud computing paradigms are bootstrap in this process. In this context, the FIWARE platform, developed by the European FI- PPP project, aims to be a key player in this new internet vision, offering the means to build new applications that can benefit from high IoT service availability. De- spite the QoS it has been identified as a key non-functional requirement to enable many IoT-related applications, the FIWARE IoT platform doesn’t provide QoS nego- tiation and resource allocation functionalities. In this work we propose a solution for QoS support in the FIWARE IoT architecture. We start analyzing the different component of the FIWARE platform. Then we choose the RTTA heuristic algorithm to solve the problem of QoS-aware service selection and we modify it to obtain a larger set of service selection solutions. Finally, once we establish a deployment us- ing a meaningful set of FIWARE IoT modules, we design and develop a QoS support in FIWARE, using the modified RTTA heuristic algorithm. At last, we show through simulations that the set of solutions of the new RTTA algorithm is larger than the original one and we validate the integration of our solution in FIWARE through a use case scenario

NEGOSEIO: framework for the sustainability of model-oriented enterprise interoperability

Dissertation to obtain the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Electrical and Computer Engineering(Industrial Information Systems)This dissertation tackles the problematic of Enterprise Interoperability in the current globally connected world. The evolution of the Information and Communication Technologies has endorsed the establishment of fast, secure and robust data exchanges, promoting the development of networked solutions. This allowed the specialisation of enterprises (particularly SMEs) and favoured the development of complex and heterogeneous provider systems. Enterprises are abandoning their self-centrism and working together on the development of more complete solutions. Entire business solutions are built integrating several enterprises (e.g., in supply chains, enterprise nesting) towards a common objective. Additionally, technologies, platforms, trends, standards and regulations keep evolving and demanding enterprises compliance. This evolution needs to be continuous, and is naturally followed by a constant update of each networked enterprise’s interfaces, assets, methods and processes. This unstable environment of perpetual change is causing major concerns in both SMEs and customers as the current interoperability grounds are frail, easily leading to periods of downtime, where business is not possible. The pressure to restore interoperability rapidly often leads to patching and to the adoption of immature solutions, contributing to deteriorate even more the interoperable environment. This dissertation proposes the adoption of NEGOSEIO, a framework that tackles interoperability issues by developing strong model-based knowledge assets and promoting continuous improvement and adaptation for increasing the sustainability of interoperability on enterprise systems. It presents the research motivations and the developed framework’s main blocks, which include model-based knowledge management, collaboration service-oriented architectures implemented over a cloud-based solution, and focusing particularly on its negotiation core mechanism to handle inconsistencies and solutions for the detected interoperability problems. It concludes by validating the research and the proposed framework, presenting its application in a real business case of aerospace mission design on the European Space Agency (ESA).FP7 ENSEMBLE, UNITE, MSEE and IMAGINE project

Combinatorial Auction-based Mechanisms for Composite Web Service Selection

Composite service selection presents the opportunity for the rapid development of complex applications using existing web services. It refers to the problem of selecting a set of web services from a large pool of available candidates to logically compose them to achieve value-added composite services. The aim of service selection is to choose the best set of services based on the functional and non-functional (quality related) requirements of a composite service requester. The current service selection approaches mostly assume that web services are offered as single independent entities; there is no possibility for bundling. Moreover, the current research has mainly focused on solving the problem for a single composite service. There is a limited research to date on how the presence of multiple requests for composite services affects the performance of service selection approaches. Addressing these two aspects can significantly enhance the application of composite service selection approaches in the real-world. We develop new approaches for the composite web service selection problem by addressing both the bundling and multiple requests issues. In particular, we propose two mechanisms based on combinatorial auction models, where the provisioning of multiple services are auctioned simultaneously and service providers can bid to offer combinations of web services. We mapped these mechanisms to Integer Linear Programing models and conducted extensive simulations to evaluate them. The results of our experimentation show that bundling can lead to cost reductions compared to when services are offered independently. Moreover, the simultaneous consideration of a set of requests enhances the success rate of the mechanism in allocating services to requests. By considering all composite service requests at the same time, the mechanism achieves more homogenous prices which can be a determining factor for the service requester in choosing the best composite service selection mechanism to deploy

The knowledge management in small and medium enterprises and the quality management approaches in service-oriented architecture

The thesis is organized into two different sections: the first one deals with the knowledge management (KM) in small and medium enterprises (SMEs), the second one deals with the quality management approaches in Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). The first research topic arises from the awareness that knowledge fertilization is crucial for SMEs competitiveness and to improve network collaboration. Nevertheless, while there is an abundance of studies describing how large companies are successfully exploiting knowledge management practices, regarding SMEs the framework is still fragmented. The Ph.D. program has been aimed at publishing two journal articles: the first one is a literature review, which provides the state of art of KM in SMEs and the second one is an empirical paper, which addresses the research questions emerging from the analysis of the literature review. The research questions concern the barriers hindering the spread of KM practices in SMEs, the main knowledge management systems (KMSs) adopted by SMEs and the impact of the use of KM practices on SME performance; they were subsequently addressed through a field analysis conducted on a sample of SMEs, adopting fuzzy set theory as methodology. Therefore the first section of this thesis is structured as a collection of these two published articles. The second section deals with the quality management approaches in Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), this research topic arises from the needs to investigate services quality techniques since there is a vast literature concerning the software quality metrics within an object-oriented environment, but this framework cannot be applied to SOA systems. This study attempted to fill this gap presenting the results of a literature review on this topic; the outcomes of the review provide a valuable understanding of the best researched areas and the areas of SOA quality which are poorly investigated. In order to give an answer to one of the retrieved research questions emerging from the analysis of the literature review and concerning the lack of case studies, an empirical analysis on SOA services performance has been carried out in an important telecommunications company by an efficiency analysis. Finally the work’ conclusions are presented which sum up both the knowledge management prospect that the SOA prospect

The use of TRAO to manage evolution risks in e-government

The need to develop and provide more efficient ways of providing Electronic Government Services to key stakeholders in government has brought about varying degrees of evolution in government. This evolution is seen in different ways like the merging of government departments, the merging of assets or its components with legacy assets etc. This has involved the incorporation of several practices that are geared towards the elimination of processes that are repetitive and manual while attempting to progressively encourage the interaction that exists between the different stakeholders. However, some of these practices have further complicated processes in government thus creating avenues for vulnerabilities which if exploited expose government and government assets to risks and threats. Focusing on ways to manage the issues accompanied with evolution can better prepare governments for manging the associated vulnerabilities, risks and threats. The basis of a conceptual framework is provided to establish the relationships that exist between the E-Government, asset and security domains. Thus, this thesis presents a design research project used in the management of evolution-related risks. The first part of the project focusses on the development of a generic ontology known as TRAO and a scenario ontology TRAOSc made up of different hypothetical scenarios. The resulting efficiency of the development of these ontologies have facilitated the development of an intelligent tool TRAOSearch that supports high-level semantically enriched queries. Results from the use of a case study prove that there are existing evolution-related issues which governments may not be fully prepared for. Furthermore, an ontological approach in the management of evolution-related risks showed that government stakeholders were interested in the use of intelligent processes that could improve government effectiveness while analysing the risks associated with doing this. Of more importance to this research was the ability to make inferences from the ontology on existing complex relationships that exist in the form of dependencies and interdependencies between Stakeholders and Assets. Thus, this thesis presents contributions in the aspect of advancing stakeholders understanding on the types of relationships that exist in government and the effect these relationships may have on service provisioning. Another novel contribution can be seen in the correction of the ambiguity associated with the terms Service, IT Service and E-Government. Furthermore, the feedback obtained from the use of an ontology-based tool during the evaluation phase of the project provides insights on whether governments must always be at par with technological evolution