SLA Monitoring of Presence-Enabled Services

The concept of presence was initially associated with an instant messaging service, allowing an end user to recognize the presence of a peer online to send or receive messages. Now the technology has grown up to include various services like monitoring performance of any type of end user device, and services are accessible from anywhere, any time. The need for enhanced value remains the driving force behind these services, for example, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services, which is drawing tremendous research interest in services performance evaluation, measurement, benchmarking, and monitoring. Monitoring service level parameters happens to be one of the most interesting application-oriented research issues because various service consumers at the customer companies/end users’ level are finding it very difficult to design and monitor an effective SLA (Service Level Agreement) with the presence-enabled service providers. This chapter focuses on to these specific issues and presents a new approach of SLA monitoring through Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). This extreme point approach actually can work much better in the context of SLA monitoring than general central-tendency-based statistical tools, a fact which has been corroborated by similar application examples of DEA presented in this chapter and has therefore it acts as the primary motivation to propose this new approach. Towards this end, this chapter first builds up the context of presence-enabled services (Day, Rosenburg, & Sugano, 2000), its SLA and SLA parameters, and the monitoring requirements. Then it explains the basics of DEA and its application in various other engineering and services context. Ultimately, a DEA application framework for monitoring an SLA of presence-enabled services is proposed which can serve as a clear guideline for the customers of presence-enabled services, not only for SLA monitoring but also at various other stages of implementing presence-enabled services frameworks. This approach exploits the definitive suitability of the application of DEA methods to presence-enabled service monitoring problems, and can be easily implemented by the industry practitioners.

Enterprise Metadata for Reliable Web Applications

This chapter examines the critical task of governing the Web application environment with enterprise metadata methodologies. As organizations move to higher levels of maturity, the ability to manage and understand the entire environment is one of the most critical aspects of the architecture. Metadata can be defined as information pertaining to the Web application environment that the organization defines as critical to the business. Successful metadata management requires a comprehensive strategy and framework which will be presented through historical, current-state, and future perspectives The author expects that by understanding the role of metadata within the Web application environment, researchers will continue to expand the body of knowledge around asset management and overall architecture governance.

Database High Availability

With the advancement of computer technologies and the World Wide Web, there has been an explosion in the amount of available e-services, most of which represent database processing. Efficient and effective database performance tuning and high availability techniques should be employed to insure that all e-services remain reliable and available all times. To avoid the impacts of database downtime, many corporations have taken interest in database availability. The goal for some is to have continuous availability such that a database server never fails. Other companies require their content to be highly availabile. In such cases, short and planned downtimes would be allowed for maintenance purposes. This chapter is meant to present the definition, the background, and the typical measurement factors of high availability. It also demonstrates some approaches to minimize a database server’s shutdown time.

All-Optical Internet

To exploit the unprecedented opportunities offered by the E-Service Applications, businesses and users alike would need a highly-available, reliable, and efficient telecommunication infrastructure. This chapter provides an insight into building the next-generation network infrastructure, that is, the All-Optical Internet. It also reveals the factors driving the convergence of the Internet Protocol (IP) and the Wavelength-Division Multiplexing (WDM) technology. The chapter discusses the dominant optical networks architectures in an attempt to show the evolution towards the ultimate all-optical packet-switching network. A special focus is given to the Optical Burst Switching (OBS) as a new emerging switching paradigm and a highly promising technology. OBS network architecture, burst assembly, signaling and reservation protocols, QoS support, and contention resolution techniques are presented. Furthermore, realistic suggestions and strategies to efficiently deploy OBS are given.

Conceptual Model Driven Software Development (CMDSD) as a Catalyst Methodology for Building Sound Semantic Web Frameworks

This chapter introduces Hyperservices as a unified application model for Semantic Web frameworks, and proposes Conceptual Model-Driven Software Development as a means of easy adoption to them. Hyperservices are based on agent societies, provided with structured information by the Semantic Web, and using Web services as a collaboration and communication interface. Afterwards, the WASP model is proposed as a framework for implementing Hyperservices, also adding personalization rules to modify the agents’ perception as well as the HIVE Architecture as Semantic Information Server infrastructure within the WASP framework. For easier adoption of these new models, Conceptual Model-Driven Software Development is proposed. It separates the conceptual aspects from the technical details by automatically generating executable code from models while the implementation details are hidden to the end user, the service developer.

The Demise of a Business-to-Business Portal

This chapter describes the development and ultimate demise of the Bizewest portal in the Western Region of Melbourne, Australia. We argue that no matter how good the portal software, the final success or failure of the portal is primarily related to how well it is adopted and used. We begin by discussing the concept and benefits of Web portals, and especially those that are applicable to SMEs, as the Bizewest portal was primarily aimed at SMEs. We describe how the portal was conceived and developed, and the difficulty that its proponents had in persuading regional SMEs to change their business processes to make best use of online trading with each other. The research was socio-technical in nature, and was based on considering this innovation through the lens of innovation translation, informed by actor- network theory. Although Bizewest has ceased operations, the portal project must be considered a success, as it produced substantial benefits.

Approaches to Building High Performance Web Applications

In this chapter, we introduce five practices to help build scalable, resilient Web applications. In 2004, IBM launched its expertise location system, bringing together two legacy systems and transforming the employee’s ability to find and connect with their extensive network. This chapter reviews five of the many issues that challenge enterprise Web applications: resource contention, managing transactions, application resiliency, geographic diversity, and exception perception management. Using the IBM expertise location system as context, we will present five key methods that mitigate these risks, achieving high availability and high performance goals.

A Scalable QoS-Aware Web Services Management Architecture (QoSMA)

As Web services are growing rapidly and as their adoption by a large number of business organizations is increasing, scalability and performance management of Web services environments are of paramount importance. This chapter proposes a scalable QoS-aware architecture, called QoSMA, for the management of QoS-aware Web services. The aim of this architecture is to provide QoS management support for both Web services’ providers and consumers. The proposed architecture is based on the commonly-used notion of QoS brokerage service. The QoS broker mediates between service requestors and service providers. Its responsibilities include performance monitoring of Web services, supporting users in Web services selection based on their QoS requirements, and the negotiation of QoS issues between requestors and providers. The QoSMA architecture provides the following benefits: First, it allows the automation of QoS management and QoS monitoring for both providers and clients. Second, the scalability of the architecture allows for better handling of the increasing demand while maintaining the pre-agreed-on QoS between service requestors and providers.

Automatic Replication for Web Applications

This chapter proposes a software architecture to enhance the availability of Web-based applications at a reasonable cost. The architecture is pluggable to existing Web-applications, so that no modifications are required to existing code. There are no specific hardware or server software requirements. Availability is achieved by replication, and strong replica consistency is automatically guaranteed by using off-the-shelf group communication components. The proposed architecture is explained in detail, and it is compared against some of the most relevant highly-available solutions used nowadays. The most distinctive feature of the proposed architecture is that it explicitly addresses replica consistency, providing automatic strong replica consistency. Besides automatic consistency, attention is given to simplicity and pluggability.

Information System Development Failure and Complexity

This chapter examines the causes of failure in a Web-based information system development project and finds out how complexity can lead a project towards failure. Learning from an Information System Development Project (ISDP) failure plays a key role in the long-term success of any organization desirous of continuous improvement via evaluation and monitoring of its information systems (IS) development efforts. This study reports on a seemingly simple (but only deceptively so) failed ISDP to inform the reader about the various complexities involved in ISDPs in general, and in developing countries in particular. An existing framework from contemporary research is adopted to map the complexities found in the project under study and the critical areas, which lead to the decreased reliability and failure in Web-based information system development, are highlighted.