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

Security Issues in Component-based Design

Abstract We propose a behavioural extension of the concept of interface of components. We aim to uniformly reason about correctness properties of both closed and open component-based systems. The characterizing feature of our approach is that we perform a local analysis over finite fragments of interactions naturally modeling mobility and coordination aspects. We present a semi-automatic technique that reduces the verification of security properties of protocols to the verification of correctness in component-based systems

From algebras to objects : generation and composition

This paper addresses objectification, a formal specification technique which inspects the potential for object-orientation of a declarative model and brings the 'implicit objects' explicit. Criteria for such objectification are formalized and implemented in a runnable prototype tool which embeds Vdm-sl into Vdm++. The paper also includes a quick presentation of a (coinductive) calculus of such generated objects, framed as generalised Moore machines.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

Dependability-Assured Software Transformation

The proposed research is to create new paradigm of software transformation and analysis tools that will incorporate computer-aided prototyping system (CAPS) into dependability-assured software transformational platform (DAST) for highly dependable embedded systems (HDES). DAST extends CAPS with software architecting and composition technologies to transform macro dependability (global qualitative requirements) into micro dependability (quantitative constraints). Based upon rapid prototyping, the dependability-assured transformational process from a rapid-prototyped system to the highly dependable embedded system will involve quantitative constraint abstraction in multiple perspectives, software transformation, and formal method applied to verify the correctness of the eventual-evolved system.NSFApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

A Review of Platforms for the Development of Agent Systems

Agent-based computing is an active field of research with the goal of building autonomous software of hardware entities. This task is often facilitated by the use of dedicated, specialized frameworks. For almost thirty years, many such agent platforms have been developed. Meanwhile, some of them have been abandoned, others continue their development and new platforms are released. This paper presents a up-to-date review of the existing agent platforms and also a historical perspective of this domain. It aims to serve as a reference point for people interested in developing agent systems. This work details the main characteristics of the included agent platforms, together with links to specific projects where they have been used. It distinguishes between the active platforms and those no longer under development or with unclear status. It also classifies the agent platforms as general purpose ones, free or commercial, and specialized ones, which can be used for particular types of applications.Comment: 40 pages, 2 figures, 9 tables, 83 reference

Proceedings of the 11th European Agent Systems Summer School Student Session

This volume contains the papers presented at the Student Session of the 11th European Agent Systems Summer School (EASSS) held on 2nd of September 2009 at Educatorio della Providenza, Turin, Italy. The Student Session, organised by students, is designed to encourage student interaction and feedback from the tutors. By providing the students with a conference-like setup, both in the presentation and in the review process, students have the opportunity to prepare their own submission, go through the selection process and present their work to each other and their interests to their fellow students as well as internationally leading experts in the agent field, both from the theoretical and the practical sector. Table of Contents: Andrew Koster, Jordi Sabater Mir and Marco Schorlemmer, Towards an inductive algorithm for learning trust alignment . . . 5; Angel Rolando Medellin, Katie Atkinson and Peter McBurney, A Preliminary Proposal for Model Checking Command Dialogues. . . 12; Declan Mungovan, Enda Howley and Jim Duggan, Norm Convergence in Populations of Dynamically Interacting Agents . . . 19; Akın Günay, Argumentation on Bayesian Networks for Distributed Decision Making . . 25; Michael Burkhardt, Marco Luetzenberger and Nils Masuch, Towards Toolipse 2: Tool Support for the JIAC V Agent Framework . . . 30; Joseph El Gemayel, The Tenacity of Social Actors . . . 33; Cristian Gratie, The Impact of Routing on Traffic Congestion . . . 36; Andrei-Horia Mogos and Monica Cristina Voinescu, A Rule-Based Psychologist Agent for Improving the Performances of a Sportsman . . . 39; --Autonomer Agent,Agent,Künstliche Intelligenz

Privacy in Cooperative Distributed Systems: Modeling and Protection Framework

A new form of computation is emerging rapidly with cloud computing, mobile computing, wearable computing and the Internet-of-Things. All can be characterized as a class of “Cooperative Distributed Systems” (CDS) in open environment. A major driver of the growth is the exponential adoption by people and organizations within all aspects of their day-to-day matters. In this context, users’ requirements for privacy protection are becoming essential and complex beyond the traditional approaches. This requires a formal treatment of “privacy” as a fundamental computation concept in CDS paradigm. The objective is to develop a comprehensive formal model for “privacy” as base to build a CDS based framework and platform in which various applications allow users to enjoy the comprehensive services in open environments while protecting their privacy seamlessly. To this end, this thesis presents a novel way of understudying, modeling and analyzing privacy concerns in CDS. A formal foundations and model of privacy is developed within the context of information management. This served as a base for developing a privacy protection management framework for CDS. It includes a privacy-aware agent model for CDS platform with the ability to support interaction-based privacy protection. The feasibility of the proposed models has been demonstrated by developing an agent-based CDS platform using JIAC framework and a privacy-based Contract Net Protocol. It also included the application scenarios for the framework for privacy protection is Internet-of-Tings, cloud-based resource scheduling and personal assistance