A dynamically reconfigurable system based on workflow and service agents

Most mission critical software systems are being built by integrating multiple distributed components. A software service, which is self-described and managed, and can be discovered and invoked dynamically through the Internet, provides a new paradigm for the composition of software systems. As a consequence, services and service-oriented software architecture will play fundamental roles in autonomic computing, which promotes the concept of self-management for software systems. To support self-managed and service-based software systems, a critical issue is how to deal with the service-oriented architecture to support dynamically reconfiguration. A service-based dynamically reconfigurable system framework for supporting future self-managed software systems was proposed in the paper. In the framework, a service agent represents an intelligent service broker that offers a self-managed and integrated service to respond to the requests from the environment adaptively. A workflow engine in this framework coordinates these service agents to implement particular business functions. The structure of the service agent, including its plan model, the relevant reconfiguration method and a service optimization mechanism, were discussed in the paper. A case study and an implementation were also presented.