Cooperative management in open distributed systems

We describe the need for the collaboration of managers in cooperative applications where the federative application context must be harmonized with the hierarchical component environment. A cooperative management concept is introduced which augments existing hierarchical management policies and procedures. The concept includes proposals for federations, 'manager' domains and collaboration procedures. It relates a group of managers to a group of managed objects, and proposes rules for collaboration between the managers before executing operations on the objects. Some possible application areas, including inter-domain information management, customer network management, the management of virtual private networks (VPN) and trading in open distributed processing (ODP), are discussed. A related approach is described for comparison. Remarks on the importance of adequate access control mechanisms and on the need for the dynamic creation and modification of manager groups are added.

[1]  Adam Wolisz,et al.  Towards Cooperative Use of Shared Data in Open Distributed Systems , 1991, Open Distributed Processing.

[2]  Roberto Saracco,et al.  Eurescom TMN Framework , 1994, Proceedings of NOMS '94 - IEEE Network Operations and Management Symposium.

[3]  John Bowers,et al.  Studies in computer supported cooperative work: theory, practice and design , 1990 .

[4]  Thomas Magedanz.  IN and TMN: the basis for future information networking architectures , 1993, Comput. Commun..

[5]  T.A. Brown,et al.  "The write stuff": security issues for customer network management of broadband data services , 1993, First IEEE Symposium on Global Data Networking.

[6]  Amit P. Sheth,et al.  A framework for controlling cooperative agents , 1993, Computer.

[7]  V. Tschammer,et al.  Concepts for open systems cooperation in distributed CIM-structures , 1988, [1988] Proceedings. Workshop on the Future Trends of Distributed Computing Systems in the 1990s.

[8]  A. Wolisz,et al.  On the co-operative management of domains in open distributed systems , 1993, 1993 4th Workshop on Future Trends of Distributed Computing Systems.

[9]  Clarence A. Ellis,et al.  Groupware: some issues and experiences , 1991, CACM.

[10]  Morris Sloman,et al.  The source of authority for commercial access control , 1988, Computer.

[11]  Richard Mark Soley,et al.  Object Management Architecture Guide , 1993 .

[12]  T. Magedanz,et al.  The use of directory and traders to support a TMN-based inter-domain management in global IN environments , 1993, First IEEE Symposium on Global Data Networking.

[13]  Wallace Colyer,et al.  Managing distributed systems , 1994 .

[14]  Alan H. Bond,et al.  Distributed Artificial Intelligence , 1988 .

[15]  Jürgen M. Schneider,et al.  An open Architecture for Inter-domain Communications Management in the PREPARE Testbed , 1993, Broadband Islands.