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Web Service Node Manager (SNM) [back to
projects page]
The goal of the Service Node Manager R&D project is to research on
“monitoring and management” of Web Services. A model of complex web
services is provided along with policies describing their expected
behaviour.
A major effort has been put on building a
graphical UI able to represent multiple views on services and
sub-services. The management system is able to evaluate diagnostic
policies against data obtained by various data providers and to
graphically represent the updated status of web services.
The Internet provides an
infrastructure for deploying and delivering business critical
services either within a corporate Intranet as out-sourced services
or even end-user services such as shops selling consumer products.
For such services to be successful it is essential that they have a
user focused management system to ensure that the end user
experiences a reliable and secure service.
This project addresses
issues associated with service level monitoring and diagnosis of a
potentially complex web site and a tool is described that allows for
the generation of service level events as well as periodic analysis.
'Policies' are associated to the graphical service components in
order to describe contexts and constraints regarding the correct
functioning of that part of the service. For examples policies may
describe the system configuration necessary for a particular part of
a service; or may describe performance requirements; or even
describe potential security violations. Policies are validated
against data provided by an underlying information system within the
management tool. This information system supports retrieval, and
logging of system information and its association to a particular
part of the service. An event notification mechanism allows the
policy monitoring system to re-evaluate a particular policy when the
information it depends on changes: failure to comply with a policy
is detected and displayed on the service graph. In such a context,
the service administrator can run a diagnosis script to find out
details of the failure and the same mechanism can analyse system
information, for example, performing security checks or driving
performance trends. The service administrator needs to focus on the
requirements and functioning of the service so that the effect on
service provision of any changes or faults in the computer system
are clear.
A graphical representation
of a service based on a hierarchical graph structure has been used
so that the administrator can present their model of the service,
navigate through the service and have significant events mapped onto
their service model. The graph hierarchy allows the service to be
successively decomposed into a number of sub-services or user
interactions until a desired level of granularity has been reached.
The graph structure is then used to represent the links between
various parts of a service.
Further information and details about this
project and area of investigation can be found in the following HPL Technical Report:
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