Non-intrusive policy optimization for dependable and adaptive service-oriented systems

The Service-Oriented Architecture paradigm facilitates the creation of distributed, composite applications. Services are usually simple to integrate, but often encapsulate complex and dynamic business logic with multiple variations and con-figurations. The fact that these services typically execute in a dynamic, unpredictable environment additionally com-plicates manageability and calls for adaptable management strategies. Current system control strategies mostly rely on static approaches, such as predefined policies. In this pa-per we propose a novel technique to improve management policies for complex service-based systems during runtime. This allows systems to adapt to changing environments, to circumvent unforeseen events and errors, and to resolve in-compatibilities of composed services. Our approach requires no knowledge about the internals of services or service plat-forms, but analyzes log output to realize adaptive policies in a non-intrusive and generic way. Experiments in our testbed show that the approach is highly effective in avoiding in-compatibilities and reducing the impact of defects in service implementations