A Coordination Approach for Self-Managed Middleware

A Coordination Approach for Self-Managed Middleware Edward Curry Department of Information Technology National University of Ireland, Galway A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy March 2006 This dissertation investigates the evolution of coordination techniques between self-managed systems within the problem domain of Message-Oriented Middleware (MOM). The basic goal of autonomic computing is to simplify and automate the management of computing systems, both hardware and software, allowing them to self-manage, without the need for human intervention. Within the software domain, self-management techniques have been utilised to empower a system to automatically self-alter (adapt) to meet their environmental and user needs. Current self-managed middleware platforms service their environment in an isolated and introverted manner. As they progress towards autonomic middleware, one of the most interesting research challenges facing self-managed middleware platforms is their lack of cooperation and coordination to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes. The primary hypothesis of this work is that within dynamic operating environments, coordinated interaction between self-managed systems can improve the ability of the individual and collective systems to fulfil performance and autonomy requirements of the environment. Coordination between next-generation middleware systems will be a vital mechanism needed to meet the challenges within future computing environments. As a step toward this goal, this thesis investigates the benefits of coordination between self-manages middleware platforms. This work explores coordination within the realm of Message-Oriented Middleware (MOM). MOM is an ideal candidate for the study of cooperation as it is an interaction-oriented middleware. In addition, self-management techniques have yet to be applied within the MOM domain, providing an opportunity to investigate their application within this domain. The main findings of this research are as follows. The coordination of self-managed systems can improve the ability of the individual and collective systems to fulfil performance and autonomy requirements of the environment. Secondly, the introduction of self-management techniques within MOM systems increases their performance within dynamic operating environments.