A dynamic configuration architecture

Abstract

Network-based services have, for more than a decade been, been an important research topic. A demand has arisen for a platform with functionalities beyond existing solutions. The paper develops a formal framework for dynamic configuration and reconfiguration of services in TAPAS - telematics architecture for plug-and-play systems (see http://tapas.item.ntnu.no). It provides representation, computation and reasoning mechanisms for semantic description and matching of required and offered capabilities and status which are required by a particular service system. It employs CIM and recently developed languages for the semantic Web in order to provide a mechanism for human-readable and machine-comprehensible descriptions of status, capabilities, system (re)configuration plans as well as exchanging messages. It also exploits XML declarative description (XDD) theory to unify such various languages seamlessly into a single uniform formalism. It permits formal definitions of application-specific configuration requirements and constraints as well as reconfiguration policies. Reasoning about these definitions and the available capabilities/status of nodes in the system yields appropriate (re)configuration plans for the composition of new services and for adaptation of current services.