NFPSLAM-SOC 2010 - Workshop on Non-Functional Properties and SLA Management in Service-Oriented Computing (NFPSLAM-SOC'10)

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is becoming a key aspect for rapidly evolving businesses that require agile system composability and flexibility. As core concepts of any SOA-based system, services have recently received significant interest. They can be used to support Business-to-Business (B2B), Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), and collaborations within or between Virtual Organizations. Like other software components, services expose both functional properties (i.e. what they do) and non-functional properties (i.e. the way they are supplied). Non-functional properties (NFPs) of a system are many and varied, including all properties, which are not directly related to the functionality provided. NFPs include quality of service (QoS) as well as other properties such as cost, adherence to standards and obligations on the consumer/provider. QoS is one of the most important subsets of non-functional properties. Although the term QoS is traditionally used to refer specifically to network performance and reliability characteristics (and methods of guaranteeing these properties) in the context of SOA the term must refer to a wider variety of service properties. This is because there are numerous properties which can be used as indicators of quality (including, e.g. performance, dependability, security, accuracy, customer service, trust, etc.). The term, as applied in SOA, must also refer to properties of system components at different levels of granularity (e.g. network, server, service, operation).

Non-functional properties play an important role in all service related tasks, especially in discovery, selection and substitution of services. It is simple to imagine a scenario in which multiple services which provide the same functionality can fulfill a user request. In this case the ability of the user to differentiate between the services depends upon their non-functional properties. Modeling, managing and performing service related tasks such as discovery, composition, negotiation and agreement based on NFPs become fundamental challenges in Service-Oriented Architectures especially in real business settings. Directly connected to the tasks mentioned above are the specification, enforcement and management of Service Level Agreements (SLAs). SLAs give the service consumer some level of guarantee that the provider and the service/s that they provide will operate within acceptable bounds - particularly with regards to non-functional properties and QoS values. At the same time SLAs serve a role for the provider in planning resource allocation and avoiding unexpected legal wrangles. With the ever-growing demand for eBusiness, service providers are increasingly interested in enforcing contracts electronically allowing autonomous supervision of service status and management. Machine-understandable NFPs and QoS models are therefore key to the widespread uptake of SLAs as well as all of the service related tasks mentioned above.

The workshop aims to tackle the research problems around methods, concepts, models, languages and technology that enable management of non-functional properties and Service Level Agreements in the context of Service Oriented Computing. This proposed workshop aims to bring together researchers and industry attendees addressing these issues, to promote and foster a greater understanding of how the management of NFP, QoS and SLAs can assist business to business and enterprise application integration.

The first edition of the workshop was organized at the ICSOC 2007, followed by the second edition at ECOWS 2008 and the third edtion at ICSOC 2009. The workshops constitute a series of successful forums, each with more than 30 participants and 12 paper presentations.

As part of the last year edition a key activity on identification and discussion of a test suite to be used to evaluate and compare techniques and tools for NFP-SLA management has been started. In this edition we plan we plan to continue discussions and plan future activities around NFP-SLA test suite. With this respect, participants will be encouraged to submit a two-page proposal that will be collected and discussed in a panel at the workshop. We expect that the test suite will include a set of requirements and a set of profiles for services to be described, discovered, evaluated and selected. Such a test suite will be published as a join result in the workshop proceedings and will be proposed for demos in the future editions.

Topics

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The following indicates the general focus of the workshop. However, related contributions are welcome as well.

NFPs and SLAs in Future Internet.
NFPs and SLAs for Cloud Computing.
NFPs and SLAs of services accessing and using Linked Open Data.
Languages for describing NFP attributes and offers.
Formal methods for NFP and Quality of Services.
NFP description and annotation for RESTful and WWSDL based services.
NFP-based discovery of services.
NFP-based selection, and ranking of Web Services.
NFP-based mediation.
NFP and SLA driven service composition.
NFP-based negotiation and agreement of service contracts.
NFP-based monitoring, accounting and recovery.
Quality metrics, KPIs, and requirement for services.
NFP and SLA driven services composition and selection.
Business requirements for electronic contracts.
Legal status and requirements on SLAs.
Cost and economic models for SLAs.
Security and trust aspects in SLAs.
Specification and modeling of Service Level Agreements in service-oriented systems.
Methodologies and techniques for translation of hierarchical, and multi-level SLAs.
SLA requirements for Cloud computing and Software as a Service (SaaS).
SLA negotiation and e-contracting.
SLA-driven planning and provisioning in service-oriented systems.
Optimization methodologies and techniques for SLA management.
SLA monitoring, reporting, and compliance.
SLA lifecycle management.
Event correlation, analytics, root cause analysis.
Prediction models for non-functional properties, especially statistics and machine learning techniques.
SLA-driven adjustment, autonomic management at run time.
Techniques and approaches of SLA-aware resource management, including virtualized infrastructures.
The relationship of SLAs and IT operational policies.
Models, frameworks, and tools to support holistic SLA management.

Workshop Venue

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Ayia Napa, Cyprus

The workshop is to be held in conjunction with The 8th European Conference on Web Services (ECOWS2010)

Organizing Committee
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Flavio de Paoli
Dipartimento di Informatica Sistemistica e Comunicazione
Universita degli studi di Milano - Bicocca
Milano, Italy
20126
Phone: +39 02 6448 7836
Fax: +39 02 6448 78 7839
E-Mail: depaoli-AT-disco.unimib.it

Ioan Toma
STI Innsbruck, University of Innsbruck
Technikerstraße 21A, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria
Phone: +43 512 507 6476
Fax: +43 512 507 9872
E-Mail: ioan.toma-AT-sti2.at

Marcel Tilly
European Microsoft Innovation Center
Ritterstrasse 23, 52072 Aachen, Germany
Phone: +49 241 997 84 14
E-Mail: marcel.tilly-AT-microsoft.com