Web Service Management

• US 20100064184A1
• Filed: 10/23/2008
• Published: 03/11/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 09/10/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP (Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Company)
• Original Assignee: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (HP Inc.)
• Inventors: ALMEIDA, Kiran Joseph, RAVINDRAN, Viji Kakkattu
• Granted Patent: US 8,838,777 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 714/57
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/046 comprising network management agents or mobile agents therefor
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0893 Assignment of logical groups to network elements
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5003 Managing SLA; Interaction between SLA and QoS
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5006 Creating or negotiating SLA contracts, guarantees or penalties
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5009 Determining service level performance parameters or violations of service level contracts, e.g. violations of agreed response time or mean time between failures [MTBF]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/5083 wherein the managed service relates to web hosting
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]

Abstract

A web service management system manages a web service 12 with one or more policies. A service level agreement is represented ontologically and queries are provided corresponding to the policies. To determine which policies are required for a consumer with a specific instance of the service level agreement the queries are run against the service level agreement, and then the determined policies used in the service. An engine 26 may monitor metrics relating to the service 12 provided by a service intermediary 22 and run queries using the metrics as data to determine if the service level agreements are breached.

Claims

1. A web service management system for automatically managing at least one web service with one or more associated policies, comprising:

at least one web service;

a policy enforcement point operatively connected to the web service for operating at least one policy with the web service; and

a management agent for managing service agreements relating to the web service;

wherein the management agent includes a policy decision data store relating policies of the web service and at least one query for querying semantic contracts for terms related to the respective policies; and

the management agent is arranged to run the at least one query against a semantic service agreement for a consumer of the web service represented using an ontology to determine which associated policies are to be run for the consumer and the web service and to update the policy enforcement point so that the policy enforcement point runs the determined associated policies.

2. A web service management system according to claim 1 further comprising a SLA evaluation engine including an evaluation data store relating consumer identifiers to one or more queries for evaluating performance data;

wherein the SLA evaluation engine is arranged to obtain performance data from the policy enforcement point and run one or more queries corresponding to the consumer to evaluate the performance data and determine from the result of each query whether the corresponding performance standard is met.

3. A web service management system according to claim 1 further comprising a reasoner for evaluating queries, wherein the reasoner is arranged to evaluate queries represented ontologically.

4. A web service management system according to claim 1 wherein the policy enforcement point includes a condition data store for storing the policies that are to be run for a plurality of consumers of the web service, and

the management agent is arranged to update the policy enforcement point by sending a message to the policy enforcement point for at least one consumer to update the condition data store to update the determined associated policies that are to be run for the at least one consumer.

5. A web service management system according to claim 1 wherein the management agent further comprises a contract identification data store for storing service agreements for consumers.

6. A web service management system according to claim 1 further comprising:

a corrective action data store linking web services, consumers, violations and the required corrective action; and

a corrective controller for receiving failure messages regarding violations, determining the corresponding corrective action using the corrective action data store and implementing the determined corrective action.

7. A method of managing a web service including

defining at least one policy of the web service and a semantic query corresponding to the or each policy;

accepting an input semantic contract for a consumer;

running the or each semantic query against the semantic contract to determine the appropriate policies corresponding to the consumer; and

updating the web service with the determined policies corresponding to the consumer; and

operating the web service for the consumer using the determined policies.

8. A method of managing a web service according to claim 7 further comprising:

providing at least one violation query corresponding to a consumer representing a service standard for that consumer;

obtaining performance data corresponding to the determined policies;

running the at least one violation query corresponding to the consumer against the obtained performance data and determining from the result if the service standard has been met.

9. A method according to claim 8 further comprising providing predetermined corrective actions corresponding to each violation query and, for each violation query that determines that a service standard has not been met, carrying out the predetermined corrective actions.

10. A method according to claim 7 wherein the or each step of running a query includes running the query on a reasoner.

11. A method according to claim 7 further comprising accepting an updated contract for a consumer, and running the or each semantic query against the updated semantic contract to determine if the determined policies for the consumer need to be changed.

12. A method according to claim 7 further comprising converting an input contract into a semantic contract represented ontologically before running the or each semantic query against the semantic contract.

13. A method according to claim 7 wherein the web service is controlled by a service intermediary containing a classification table storing data representing the determined policies to be run for each consumer, wherein the step of updating the web service includes sending a message to the service intermediary including any changes to the determined policies.

14. A management agent for managing a web service, including:

a contract information table for storing contracts represented ontologically for the provision of the web service to consumers;

a policy decision table relating policies of the web service and at least one query for querying semantic contracts for terms related to the respective policies; and

a policy decision point for running the at least one query against the semantic contracts for a consumer to determine which associated policies are to be run for the consumer and the web service.

15. A management agent according to claim 14 further comprising:

a corrective action table linking web services, consumers, contract violations and the required corrective action; and

a corrective controller for receiving failure messages regarding contract violations, determining the corresponding corrective action using the corrective action table and implementing the determined corrective action.