A models@runtime framework for designing and managing service-based applications

Coordinating the configurations of Services, Orchestrations, Execution Platform and Infrastructure layers in a Service-Based environment is a significant challenge for software industry. In recent years, it has become even more difficult, because infrastructure solutions such as AmazonEC2, Cloudstack or RackSpace have increasingly rich capabilities, allowing for example, the infrastructure/platform/application dynamic adaptations. To address this challenge, in the context of the S-Cube Network of Excellence, we have proposed a domain specific modelling language to describe the whole Service-Based Applications layers entities using a models@runtime-based approach to cover the life-cycle of such applications. Our approach allows (i) to keep a representation of all the layers of a services-based applications, (ii) to coordinate the cross-layer reconfiguration and adaptations and (iii) to provide a support for infrastructure elasticity and (re)configuration to meet the resource requirements and some applications-specific constraints. The approach is implemented by a framework, named Kevoree. This paper summarizes the main concepts used in Kevoree and the main features designed in the context of the S-Cube project.