MDA4ServiceCloud 2010 - 4th Workshop on Modeling, Design, and Analysis for the Service Cloud (MDA4ServiceCloud2010)

A new paradigm ? service-orientation ? is currently emerging for distributed computing and e-business processing; it has evolved from object-oriented and component-based computing to enable building agile networks of collaborating business applications distributed within and across organizational boundaries. This new paradigm utilizes services (autonomous platform-independent computational elements that can be described, published, discovered and accessed over the Internet using standard protocols) as fundamental elements for developing applications/solutions; services will be important for customers and not the specific software or hardware component that is used to implement the services. In this context, services become the next level of abstraction in the process of creating systems that would enable automation of e-businesses. This paradigm shift is changing the way the computer software is developed and used (designed, architected, delivered, consumed, and analysed), and this way of reorganizing software applications into a set of interacting services is usually referred to as Service-oriented Architectures (SOA).

To realize the vision of service-orientation (billions of users and services, interacting in a loosely coupled manner), resources need to packaged and offered in an economical, scalable and flexible manner that is affordable and attractive to IT customers and technology investors. The underlying infrastructure that allows such efficient service provisioning is referred to as the Service Cloud. Cloud services are accessed over the Internet via user-friendly web interfaces, are location agnostic, can be hosted through third party service providers and can be quick to improve based on real-time customer feedback.

In recent years, various forms of services in the cloud have appeared; amongst them, Web services, Grid services, Semantic Web Services, and e-Services are the most important. Although they share some of the principles of service-oriented architectures, they differ in many other aspects, which is an undesirable situation in the context of service-orientation. Since standard protocols are a basic principle of SOA, this undesirable situation is partly due also to the fact that there are currently no mature methodologies and techniques to support analysis for services in the cloud. Moreover, all these forms of service-oriented architectures have developed different conceptual models, resulting in different methodologies for modelling and designing service-oriented systems.

In this context, this workshop aims to tackle the research problems (as well as practical experiences) around methods, concepts, models, languages and technology that enable computing in the service cloud. Of particular interest are the architectural, technical, and developmental foundations of service-oriented systems in the cloud, and showing how they combine synergistically to enable distributed computing on the scale required by today’s Internet-connected enterprise.

The workshop aims to bring together researchers and industry practitioners (e.g. leading modelers, architects, system vendors, open-source projects, developers, and end-users) addressing many of these issues (including recent developments in tools and techniques, and real-world implementations of the service cloud), and promote and foster a greater understanding of how the service cloud can assist business to business and enterprise application integration, thus helping people develop and manage business processes more efficiently and effectively.

Topics

top ?the relationship between SOA, Grid, Cloud computing and the service cloud
?case studies for the service cloud
?analysis methodologies for service-oriented systems in the service cloud
?migration of legacy applications to SOA and the service cloud
?languages for service-oriented systems in the service cloud
?modeling and simulation of the service cloud
?verification, validation, and evaluation of the service cloud
?MDA (OMG Model Driven Architecture) for service-oriented systems in the service cloud
?patterns in modelling, design, and analysis for service-oriented systems
?best practices and guidelines for developing the service cloud
?semantic aspects and ontologies for the service cloud
?quality of services (QoS) analysis and modelling in the service cloud
?services level agreements (SLAs) modelling and negotiation in the service cloud
?analysis and modelling of security, privacy, and trust in the service cloud
?policy-based service-oriented systems in the service cloud
?methods for migrating legacy systems to the service cloud
?service lifecycle management and infrastructure lifecycle managing for the service cloud
?service discovery, composition, execution, monitoring, and mediation in service-oriented environments
?adaptability and recovery strategies in the service cloud
?models for governance in the service cloud
?standards for modeling, specification, design and analysis of the service cloud
?tools, environments and factories for modelling, design and analysis of service-oriented systems in the service cloud
These topics indicate the general focus of the workshop, however, related contributions are welcome also.