Achieving autonomic Web service compositions with models at runtime

• Published in: Computers & electrical engineering 2017-10, Vol.63, p.332-352
• Main Authors: Alférez, Germán H., Pelechano, Vicente
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Architecture; Autonomic computing; Dynamic adaptation; Dynamic evolution; Dynamic software product lines; Evolution; Models at runtime; Run time (computers); Web service compositions; Web services
• ISSN: 0045-7906; 1879-0755
• DOI: 10.1016/j.compeleceng.2017.08.004

Several exceptional situations may arise in the complex, heterogeneous, and changing contexts where Web service operations run. For instance, a Web service operation may have greatly increased its execution time or may have become unavailable. The contribution of this article is to provide a tool-supported framework to guide autonomic adjustments of context-aware service compositions using models at runtime. During execution, when problematic events arise in the context, models are used by an autonomic architecture to guide changes of the service composition. Under the closed-world assumption, the possible context events are fully known at design time. Nevertheless, it is difficult to foresee all the possible situations arising in uncertain contexts where service compositions run. Therefore, the proposed framework also covers the dynamic evolution of service compositions to deal with unexpected events in the open world. An evaluation demonstrates that our framework is efficient during dynamic adjustments.