Survey of Service Description Languages and Their Issues in Cloud Computing

Along with the growing popularity of cloud computing technology, the amount of available cloud services and their usage frequency are increasing. In order to provide a mechanism for the efficient enforcement of service-relevant operations in cloud environment, such as service discovery, service provision, and service management, a completed and precise service specification model is highly required. In this paper, we conducted a survey on existing service description languages applied in three different domains - general services, Web/SOA services, and cloud services. We discussed and compared the past literature from seven major aspects, which are: (1) domain, (2) coverage, (3) purpose, (4) representation, (5) semantic expressivity, (6) intended users, and (7) features. Additionally, two core dimensions semantic expressivity and coverage are employed to categorize and analyse the key service description languages by using Magic Quadrant methodology. These two dimensions are regarded as the most essential factors for the evaluation of a service description model. Based on this analysis, we concluded that Unified Service Description Language (USDL) is the language with the widest coverage from business, technical and operational aspects, while OWL-S is the one that has the highest semantic expressivity. At last, critical research issues on cloud service description languages are identified and analysed. The solution of these issues requires more research efforts on the standardization of cloud service specification, which will eventually enhance the development of cloud industry

Modeling Service Level Agreements with Linked USDL Agreement

Nowadays, service trading over the Web is gaining momentum. In this highly dynamic scenario, both providers and consumers need to formalize their contractual and legal relationship, creating service level agreements. Although there exist some proposals that provide models to describe that relationship, they usually only cover technical aspects, not providing explicit semantics to the agreement terms. Furthermore, these models cannot be effectively shared on the Web, since they do not actually follow Web principles. These drawbacks hamper take-up and automatic analysis. In this article, we introduce Linked USDL Agreement, a semantic model to specify, manage and share service level agreement descriptions on the Web. This model is part of the Linked USDL family of ontologies that can describe not only technical but also business related aspects of services, incorporating Web principles. We validate our proposal by describing agreements in computational and non-computational scenarios, namely cloud computing and business process outsourcing services. Moreover, we evaluate the actual coverage and expressiveness of Linked USDL Agreement comparing it with existing models. In order to foster its adoption and effectively manage the service level agreement lifecycle, we present an implemented tool that supports creation, automatic analysis, and publication on the Web of agreement descriptions.Junta de Andalucía P12-TIC-1867Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2012-32273Junta de Andalucía TIC-5906Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2015-70560-RComisión Europea FP7-ICT 31786

Using Semantic Web Technologies to Query and Manage Information within Federated Cyber-Infrastructures

A standardized descriptive ontology supports efficient querying and manipulation of data from heterogeneous sources across boundaries of distributed infrastructures, particularly in federated environments. In this article, we present the Open-Multinet (OMN) set of ontologies, which were designed specifically for this purpose as well as to support management of life-cycles of infrastructure resources. We present their initial application in Future Internet testbeds, their use for representing and requesting available resources, and our experimental performance evaluation of the ontologies in terms of querying and translation times. Our results highlight the value and applicability of Semantic Web technologies in managing resources of federated cyber-infrastructures.EC/FP7/318389/EU/Federation for FIRE/Fed4FIREEC/FP7/732638/EU/Federation for FIRE Plus/Fed4FIREplu

A Reference Architecture for Service Lifecycle Management – Construction and Application to Designing and Analyzing IT Support

Service-orientation and the underlying concept of service-oriented architectures are a means to successfully address the need for flexibility and interoperability of software applications, which in turn leads to improved IT support of business processes. With a growing level of diffusion, sophistication and maturity, the number of services and interdependencies is gradually rising. This increasingly requires companies to implement a systematic management of services along their entire lifecycle. Service lifecycle management (SLM), i.e., the management of services from the initiating idea to their disposal, is becoming a crucial success factor. Not surprisingly, the academic and practice communities increasingly postulate comprehensive IT support for SLM to counteract the inherent complexity. The topic is still in its infancy, with no comprehensive models available that help evaluating and designing IT support in SLM. This thesis presents a reference architecture for SLM and applies it to the evaluation and designing of SLM IT support in companies. The artifact, which largely resulted from consortium research efforts, draws from an extensive analysis of existing SLM applications, case studies, focus group discussions, bilateral interviews and existing literature. Formal procedure models and a configuration terminology allow adapting and applying the reference architecture to a company’s individual setting. Corresponding usage examples prove its applicability and demonstrate the arising benefits within various SLM IT support design and evaluation tasks. A statistical analysis of the knowledge embodied within the reference data leads to novel, highly significant findings. For example, contemporary standard applications do not yet emphasize the lifecycle concept but rather tend to focus on small parts of the lifecycle, especially on service operation. This forces user companies either into a best-of-breed or a custom-development strategy if they are to implement integrated IT support for their SLM activities. SLM software vendors and internal software development units need to undergo a paradigm shift in order to better reflect the numerous interdependencies and increasing intertwining within services’ lifecycles. The SLM architecture is a first step towards achieving this goal.:Content Overview List of Figures....................................................................................... xi List of Tables ...................................................................................... xiv List of Abbreviations.......................................................................xviii 1 Introduction .................................................................................... 1 2 Foundations ................................................................................... 13 3 Architecture Structure and Strategy Layer .............................. 57 4 Process Layer ................................................................................ 75 5 Information Systems Layer ....................................................... 103 6 Architecture Application and Extension ................................. 137 7 Results, Evaluation and Outlook .............................................. 195 Appendix ..........................................................................................203 References .......................................................................................... 463 Curriculum Vitae.............................................................................. 498 Bibliographic Data............................................................................ 49