Dependability of Web Service Architectures

Abstract:

The IT industry is beginning to mirror a trend of specialization and outsourcing
that has been present for decades in other industries, such as the automotive
industry. We are beginning to see the emergence of specialist service providers,
such as CRM services and market places, payment and settlement services, bill
presentment services and many others. Organizations increasingly use these
services in complex enterprise application systems using web service
infrastructures. Unlike the automotive industry, however, the IT industry does
not yet have an agreed way to manage web service quality. In this talk, I will
focus on managing the service quality of web services that are used across
organizational boundaries. I discuss the systematic definition of formal service
level agreement languages that support the precise definition of service quality,
such as latency, throughput, availability and reliability. I present how service
level agreements written in these languages can be used and describe how service
level agreements can be policed. I conclude the talk by sketching further
research that is necessary before we have a similar grip on quality as other
engineering disciplines.