An Ontology-Based Approach To Concern-Specific Dynamic Software Structure Monitoring

Software reliability has not kept pace with computing hardware. Despite the use reliability improvement techniques and methods, faults remain that lead to software errors and failures. Runtime monitoring can improve software reliability by detecting certain errors before failures occur. Monitoring is also useful for online and electronic services, where resource management directly impacts reliability and quality. For example, resource ownership errors can accumulate over time (e. g. , as resource leaks) and result in software aging. Early detection of errors allows more time for corrective action before failures or service outages occur. In addition, the ability to monitor individual software concerns, such as application resource ownership structure, can help support autonomic computing for self-healing, self-adapting and self-optimizing software. This thesis introduces ResOwn - an application resource ownership ontology for interactive session-oriented services. ResOwn provides software monitoring with enriched concepts of application resource ownership borrowed from real-world legal and ownership ontologies. ResOwn is formally defined in OWL-DL (Web Ontology Language Description Logic), verified using an off-the-shelf reasoner, and tested using the call processing software for a small private branch exchange (PBX). The ResOwn Prime Directive states that every object in an operational software system is a resource, an owner, or both simultaneously. Resources produce benefits. Beneficiary owners may receive resource benefits. Nonbeneficiary owners may only manage resources. This approach distinguishes resource ownership use from management and supports the ability to detect when a resource's role-based runtime capacity has been exceeded. This thesis also presents a greybox approach to concern-specific, dynamic software structure monitoring including a monitor architecture, greybox interpreter, and algorithms for deriving monitoring model from a monitored target's formal specifications. The target's requirements and design are assumed to be specified in SDL, a formalism based on communicating extended finite state machines. Greybox abstraction, applicable to both behavior and structure, provides direction on what parts, and how much of the target to instrument, and what types of resource errors to detect. The approach was manually evaluated using a number of resource allocation and ownership scenarios. These scenarios were obtained by collecting actual call traces from an instrumented PBX. The results of an analytical evaluation of ResOwn and the monitoring approach are presented in a discussion of key advantages and known limitations. Conclusions and recommended future work are discussed at the end of the thesis

An Ontology-Based Approach to Concern-Specific Dynamic Software Structure Monitoring

I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. This is a true copy of my thesis, including any required final revisions, as accepted by my examiners. I understand that my thesis may be made electronically available to the public. ii Software reliability has not kept pace with computing hardware. Despite the use reliability improvement techniques and methods, faults remain that lead to software errors and failures. Runtime monitoring can improve software reliability by detecting certain errors before failures occur. Monitoring is also useful for online and electronic services, where resource management directly impacts reliability and quality. For example, resource ownership errors can accumulate over time (e.g., as resource leaks) and result in software aging. Early detection of errors allows more time for corrective action before failures or service outages occur. In addition, the ability to monitor individual software concerns, such as application resource ownership structure, can help support autonomic computing for self-healing, self-adapting and self-optimizing software. This thesis introduces ResOwn- an application resource ownership ontology for interactiv

Automatic monitoring of response time performance in soft real-time systems

I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. I authorize the University of Waterloo to lend thesis to other institutions or individuals for the purpose of scholarly research. B.R. Pekilis I further authorize the University of Waterloo to reproduce this thesis by photocopying or by any other means, in total or in part, at the request of others institution or individuals for the pur-pose of scholarly research. B.R. Pekilis ii The University of Waterloo requires the signatures of all persons using or photocopying this thesis. Please sign below, and give address and date. iii The focus of the research presented in this thesis is on session-oriented, soft real-time systems whose behavior is specified using the ITU Specification and Description Languag

Multi-Dimensional Separation of Concerns and

The process of multi-dimensional separation of concerns (MDSOC) is intended to allow developers to partition overlapping concerns in new and existing software products along multiple dimensions of composition and decomposition[1][6][7][8]. A clean separation of concerns is purported to: • reduce complexity

A Hierarchical Classification for Software Health Indicators

Experience shows that external failures of software systems are often preceded by deterioration in their internal state (i.e. an error). An error is defined as the difference between a computed, observed, or measured value or conditio