DETERMINING SYSTEM LEVEL DEPENDENCIES

• US 20100281455A1
• Filed: 04/30/2009
• Published: 11/04/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 04/30/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Anand, Ashok, Gupta, Manish, Sethi, Manish, Gangopadhyay, Dipayan
• Granted Patent: US 8,959,481 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 717/104
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/20 Software design
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/24 Object-oriented
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/35 model driven
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 8/60 Software deployment

Abstract

Techniques for co-relating at least one of a functional design and at least one implementation artifact of a solution with at least one infrastructure component of a target deployment environment for the solution are provided. The techniques include obtaining at least one of a functional design and at least one implementation artifact of a solution, obtaining at least one infrastructure component of a target deployment environment for the solution, and co-relating at least one of a functional design and at least one implementation artifact of a solution with at least one infrastructure component of a target deployment environment for the solution, wherein co-relating comprises discovering at least one system level dependency among the at least one of a functional design and at least one implementation artifact and the at least one infrastructure component.

Claims

1. A method for co-relating at least one of a functional design and at least one implementation artifact of a solution with at least one infrastructure component of a target deployment environment for the solution, comprising the steps of:

obtaining at least one of a functional design and at least one implementation artifact of a solution;

obtaining at least one infrastructure component of a target deployment environment for the solution; and

co-relating at least one of a functional design and at least one implementation artifact of a solution with at least one infrastructure component of a target deployment environment for the solution, wherein co-relating comprises discovering at least one system level dependency among the at least one of a functional design and at least one implementation artifact and the at least one infrastructure component.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising answering a query of at least one run-time implication of a design in terms of at least one potential resource consumed by at least one operation of a designed artifact.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising answering a query of at least one enterprise implication of at least one infrastructure observation.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising answering a query of at least one enterprise implication of at least one issue comprising at least one of an exception, a monitored event and a failure.

5. A system for co-relating at least one of a functional design and at least one implementation artifact of a solution with at least one infrastructure component of a target deployment environment for the solution, comprising:

a synthesizer that integrates at least one input model;

at least one source connector, wherein each source connector imports at least one respective model from a source, and wherein the source is at least one of a design tool, a file system and an infrastructure component;

at least one meta-model, wherein each meta-model captures semantics of a corresponding model in terms of at least one of entity type, relationship type and behavior of a given kind of model; and

at least one stitching relationship among at least one element of the at least one meta-model that describe at least one relationship among a set of at least one meta-model element from multiple meta-models that are semantically related.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein the synthesizer:

processes at least one submitted query by using information from multiple meta-models by traversing at least one stitching relationship to decompose at least one submitted query into at least one sub-query on appropriate models.

7. The system of claim 6, wherein the synthesizer:

directs the at least one sub-query to at least one respective model via the at least one source connector to retrieve information from at least one actual source.

8. The system of claim 5, wherein at least one new meta-model are added to the system and related to the at least one meta-model by adding at least one appropriate stitching relationship.

9. The system of claim 5, wherein the at least one input model comprise at least one of at least one functional design and implementation artifact, at least one placement directive for deploying the at least one functional artifact on a target infrastructure, and a model of at least one property and contents of at least one component of the target infrastructure.

10. The system of claim 9, wherein each model comprises at least one specific entity and relationships describing at least one of structure and behavior of at least one of at least one functional design artifact, a target infrastructure component, and at least one placement directive.

11. The system of claim 5, wherein the at least one meta-model comprises:

at least one meta-model of at least one structure and behavior of typical development artifact in a service-oriented architecture (SOA) system.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein the at least one meta-model of at least one structure and behavior of typical development artifact in an SOA system comprise at least one of at least one definition of a business process execution language (BPEL) process, at least one web service and at least one implementation artifact of the at least one web service.

13. The system of claim 5, wherein the at least one meta-model comprises:

at least one meta-model of at least one structure and behavior of infrastructure component.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein the at least one meta-model of at least one structure and behavior of infrastructure component comprise at least one of a process server, a web container and a managed object container in an application server.

15. The system of claim 5, wherein the at least one meta-model comprises:

at least one meta-model of at least one structure and behavior of management facility for at least one infrastructure component and at least one functional component, wherein each meta-model describes at least one of structure and behavior of at least one model admitted by the meta-model.

16. The system of claim 5, wherein semantics of the at least one stitching relationship and semantics of at least one relationship used in the at least one meta-model are at least one of expressed in an executable rules language and interpreted by at least one suitable forward and backward-chaining traversal algorithm implemented in a conventional programming language.

17. The system of claim 5, wherein the synthesizer comprises a rules execution engine to interpret and reason with at least one rule to implement query decomposition processing.

18. The system of claim 5, wherein the at least one meta-model and at least one stitching relationship are translated into at least one rule in an executable rules language.

19. A computer program product comprising a tangible computer readable recordable storage medium including computer usable program code for co-relating at least one of a functional design and at least one implementation artifact of a solution with at least one infrastructure component of a target deployment environment for the solution, wherein the computer usable program code comprises one or more distinct software modules, the computer program product including:

computer usable program code for obtaining at least one of a functional design and at least one implementation artifact of a solution;

computer usable program code for obtaining at least one infrastructure component of a target deployment environment for the solution; and

computer usable program code for co-relating at least one of a functional design and at least one implementation artifact of a solution with at least one infrastructure component of a target deployment environment for the solution, wherein co-relating comprises discovering at least one system level dependency among the at least one of a functional design and at least one implementation artifact and the at least one infrastructure component.

20. A system for co-relating at least one of a functional design and at least one implementation artifact of a solution with at least one infrastructure component of a target deployment environment for the solution, comprising:

a memory; and

at least one processor coupled to the memory and operative to;

obtain at least one of a functional design and at least one implementation artifact of a solution;

obtain at least one infrastructure component of a target deployment environment for the solution; and

co-relate at least one of a functional design and at least one implementation artifact of a solution with at least one infrastructure component of a target deployment environment for the solution, wherein co-relating comprises discovering at least one system level dependency among the at least one of a functional design and at least one implementation artifact and the at least one infrastructure component.