IMPORTANT STANDARDS FOR AUTONOMIC COMPUTING We need to ask the following question: "If open standards are important, which standards need to be included for success in autonomic computing?" This can be answered by the comparison in Table 9.2. Note that at the very bottom of Table 9.2 is the indication that new standards are needed as autonomic computing evolves. IBM will continue to leverage the open standards that exist today and move to develop enhanced standards where needed in the future. Let us briefly review each of these standards: The Distributed Management Task Force, Inc. (DMTF) is the industry organization that is leading the development, adoption, and unification of management standards and initiatives for desktop, enterprise, and Internet environments. The Common Information Model (CIM) is a model for describing overall management information in a network/enterprise environment. CIM is comprised of a Specification and a Schema. The Specification defines the details for integration with other management models, while the Schema provides the actual model descriptions. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)[2] is a large open international community of network designers, operators, vendors, and researchers concerned with the evolution of Internet architecture and the smooth operation of the Internet. The Policy Core Information Model (RFC3060) is the standard that presents the object-oriented information model for representing policy information developed jointly in the IETF Policy Framework WG and as extensions to CIM activity in the DMTF. This model defines two hierarchies of object classes: structural classes representing policy information and control of policies, and association classes that indicate how instances of the structural classes are related to each other. The Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is an application layer protocol that facilitates the exchange of management information between network devices. It is part of the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) protocol suite. SNMP enables network administrators to manage network performance, find and solve network problems, and plan for network growth. Table 9.2. Mapping Open Standards Against Core Autonomic Capabilities | | Solution Install | Common System Administration | Problem Determination | Autonomic Monitoring | Policy-Based Management | Complex Analysis | Trasaction Measurements | | Distributed Management Task Force, Inc. (DMTF) | | | | | | | | | Common Information Model (CIM) | | | • | • | | | • | | Internet Engineering Task Force (IEF) | | | | | | | | | Policy Core Information Model (RFC3060) | | | | | • | | | | Simple Network Mangement Protocol (SNMP) | | | • | • | | | | | Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) | | | | | | | | | Web Services Security (WS-Security) | | | | | • | | | | Web Services Distributed Management (WS-DM) | | | • | | | | • | | Java Community Process | | | | | | | | | Java Management Extensions (JSR3, JMX) | | | • | | • | | • | | Logging API Specificaiton (JSR47) | | | • | | | | • | | Java Agent Services (JSR87) | | | | • | | • | • | | Portlet Specification (JSR168) | | • | | | | | | | Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) | | | | | | | | | BlueFin | | | • | • | | | | | Global Grid Forum (GGF) | | | | | | | | | Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA) | | | • | • | | | • | | Open Grid Services Infrastructure (OGSI) | | | • | • | • | • | • | | Web Services Common Resource Model (WS-CRM) | | | • | | | • | • | | The Open Group | | | | | | | | | Application Response Measurement (ARM) | | | • | • | | | • | | New Autonomic Computing Standards (to be developed) | • | • | • | • | • | • | • |
Two versions of SNMP exist: SNMP version 1 (SNMPv1) and SNMP version 2 (SNMPv2). Both versions have a number of features in common, but SNMPv2 offers enhancements, such as additional protocol operations. The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) is a not-for-profit, global consortium that drives the development, convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. Members themselves set the OASIS technical agenda, using a lightweight, open process expressly designed to promote industry consensus and unite disparate efforts. OASIS produces worldwide standards for security, Web Services, XML conformance, business transactions, electronic publishing, topic maps, and interoperability within and between marketplaces. Web Services Security (WSS) describes enhancements to SOAP[3] messaging in order to provide quality of protection through message integrity, and single message authentication. These mechanisms can be used to accommodate a wide variety of security models and encryption technologies. Web Services Distributed Management (WSDM) is a standard way of using Web services architecture and technology to manage distributed resources. The Java Community Process is an open organization of international Java developers and licensees whose charter is to develop and revise Java technology specifications, reference implementations, and technology compatibility kits. The Java Management Extensions (JSR3, JMX) specification will provide a management architecture, APIs, and services for building Web-based, distributed, dynamic, and modular solutions to manage Java-enabled resources. JMXTM technology provides tools for building distributed, Web-based, modular, and dynamic solutions for managing and monitoring devices, applications and service-driven networks. The Logging API Specification (JSR47) is a specification for logging APIs within the Java platform. These APIs will be suitable for logging events from within the Java platform and from within Java applications. It is envisaged that: -
It will be possible to enable or disable logging at runtime. -
It will be possible to control logging at a fairly fine granularity, so that logging can be enabled or disabled for specific functionality. -
The logging APIs will allow registration of logging services at runtime, so third parties can add new log services. -
It will be possible to provide bridging services that connect the Java logging APIs to existing logging services (e.g. operating system logs). Where appropriate, the logging APIs will also support displaying high-priority messages to end-users. Java Agent Services (JSR87) are a set of objects and service interfaces to support the deployment and operation of autonomous communicative agents. The specification is based upon the Abstract Architecture developed by FIPA, the Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents. This Abstract Architecture defines how agents may register and discover each other, and how agents interact by exchanging intentional messages which are grounded in speech-act theory and first-order predicate logic. The specification defines two kinds of entities: -
Java classes for objects corresponding to the various elements of ACL (agent communication language) and SL (content language), as well as FIPA agent names and descriptions. -
Java interfaces corresponding to the agent services for agent registration, discovery, and communication. It is intended that the service interfaces may be implemented in terms of a number of different technologies, including both existing Java standards and proprietary systems. (In this respect, the specification is similar to previous specifications such as JMS, the Java Message Service.) The Portlet Specification (JSR268), to enable interoperability between portlets and portals, will define a set of APIs for portal computing addressing the areas of aggregation, personalization, presentation, and security. The portlet specification will define the different components for portal computing, their interaction, life cycle and semantics. These components will comprise—but not be restricted to—portlets, deployment descriptors, and portlet-related APIs. In addition, APIs for vendor extensions, APIs for security, user customization, and layout management will be considered. Also, it will define the minimum set of possible window states for a portlet, such as normal, minimized, and maximized, and the valid state transitions and portlet modes (such as view, edit, help, configure) per the markup language. The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) is a registered standards and nonprofit trade association dedicated to "ensuring that storage networks become complete and trusted solutions across the IT community." [4] SNIA has the following goals: -
Accelerate new technology development and the evolution of standards. -
Define and adhere to smart, collaborative, rigorous methods. -
Collaborate with the IT community to address real business issues. -
Deliver materials, programs, and services to inform and educate. -
Evangelize for acceptance among vendors and IT professionals. The BlueFin standard will allow IT managers to connect multiple vendors' products into a storage area network (SAN) and manage them all with a common set of tools. HP and IBM continue to support BlueFin in SNIA, most recently participating in a breakthrough demonstration of heterogeneous SAN management using BlueFin technology. BlueFin employs technology from the WBEM initiative that uses the Managed Object Format (MOF) to describe system resources based on a CIM, or view of physical and logical system components. WBEM includes a data model, the CIM, an encoding specification based on XML, and a transport mechanism based on HTTP. Global Grid Forum (GGF) is a community-initiated forum of more than 5,000 individual researchers and practitioners working on distributed computing, or grid, technologies.[5] GGF's primary objective is to promote and support the development, deployment, and implementation of Grid technologies and applications via the creation and documentation of "best practices"—technical specifications, user experiences, and implementation guidelines. GGF efforts are also aimed at the development of a broadly based Integrated Grid Architecture that can serve to guide the research, development, and deployment activities of the emerging grid communities. Defining such architecture will advance the grid agenda through the broad deployment and adoption of fundamental basic services and by sharing code among different applications with common requirements. Grid technologies provide the foundation for a number of large-scale efforts utilizing the global Internet to build distributed computing and communications infrastructures. As common grid services and interoperable components emerge, the difficulty in undertaking these large-scale efforts will be greatly reduced and, as importantly, the resulting systems will better support interoperation. Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA) is a grid-computing initiative. The purpose of the OGSA Working Group (WG) is to achieve an integrated approach to future OGSA service development via the documentation of requirements, functionalities, priorities, and interrelationships for OGSA services. Topic areas scoped and analyzed are common resource model and service domain mechanisms, but the precise set to be addressed will be determined in early discussions. The output of this WG will be an OGSA architecture roadmap document that defines, scopes, and outlines requirements for key services. It is expected that the development of detailed specifications for specific services will occur in other WGs (existing or new). Open Grid Services Infrastructure (OGSI) is another important grid-related initiative. The objective of the OGSI Working Group is to review and refine the OGSI specification and other documents that derive from this specification, including OGSA infrastructure–related technical specifications and supporting informational documents. In this specification, an attempt is made to define the minimal, integrated set of extensions and interfaces necessary to support definition of the services that will compose OGSA. OGSI version 1.0 defines a component model that extends WSDL and XML Schema Definition to incorporate the concepts of: -
Stateful Web services -
Inheritance of Web services interfaces -
Asynchronous notification of state changes -
References to instances of services -
Collections of service instances -
Service state data that augment the constraint capabilities of Standard ML (SML) Schema definitions OGSA is introducing Web service common resource models (WSCRM) for use in grid space. Examples are MDS discovery services and the resources they operate on. Each grid approach has a different resource model and a specific protocol for talking to the resources. The goal is to assure common models that can publish to a registry, and can support different binding protocols. Open Group is a non-profit consortium focusing on best practices and process-based XML content for e-business and application integration. The mission of the Open Applications Group is to define and encourage the adoption of a unifying standard for e-business and application software interoperability that reduces customer cost and time to deploy solutions. The mission of the Open Group is to achieve the creation of boundaryless information flow by: -
Working with customers to capture, understand, and address current and emerging requirements, establish policies, and share best practices. -
Working with suppliers, consortia, and standards bodies to develop consensus and facilitate interoperability, and to evolve and integrate specifications and open source technologies. -
Offering a comprehensive set of services to enhance the operational efficiency of consortia. -
Developing and operating the industry's premier certification service and encouraging procurement of certified products. The Application Response Measurement (ARM) API defines function calls, which can be used in an application or other software for transaction monitoring. It provides a way to monitor business transactions, by embedding simple cells in the software, which can be captured by a software agent supporting the ARM API. | 
