Context-Aware Autonomous Web Services in Software Product Lines

Abstract

Web services run in complex environments where it is desirable to be able to count on mechanisms to adapt them according to contextual changes. Manual adaptations are unfeasible in intricate service compositions that are built with highly dynamic Web services. However, the principles of Autonomic Computing could support their self-adaptation. In this paper, we propose a method for designing and implementing context-aware autonomous Web services in system families. It is based on Software Product Line (SPL) engineering to support their systematic reuse in mass production environments. Autonomic behavior is achieved by our Model-based Reconfiguration Engine for Web services (MoRE-WS). MoRE-WS leverages variability models at runtime as easy-to-understand and semantically rich adaptation policies for decision-making while the architecture of a Dynamic SPL (DSPL) allows a flexible service recomposition. A case study illustrates the applicability of our method.