Service Level Agreements for Real-Time Service-Oriented Infrastructures

Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are nowadays used as a cornerstone for building service-oriented architectures. SLAs have been closely investigated in the scope of distributed and Grid computing and are now gaining uptake in cloud computing as well. However, most solutions have been developed for specific purposes and are not applicable generally, even though the most approaches propose a general usability. Only rarely have SLAs been applied to real-time systems. The purpose of this chapter is to analyze different fields where SLAs are used, examine the proposed solutions, and investigate how these can be improved in order to better support the creation of real-time service-oriented architectures.