Monitoring distributed systems: a relational approach

Abstract : Monitoring is the extraction of dynamic information concerning a computational process, as that process executes. Distributed systems, with their qualitative and quantitative increases in complexity, demand an intelligent monitor. The thesis of this dissertation is that monitoring is fundamentally an information processing activity, and that the relational model, as applied in relational databases, is an appropriate formalization of this information. In this approach, the notions of entity (data structures, processes, hardware components, etc.) and relationship (processes running on processors, messages in queues, etc.) are structured as a set of time-varying relations. Queries on this collection of relations are translated into retrieval and computational activities to be performed by the monitor. Data collection is an important aspect of monitoring. After discussing a model of the environment where data collection takes place, a flexible, strongly typed, efficient data collection mechanism is presented. The impact of various features of the environment on this mechanism is examined. The user specifies the desired actions of the monitor with a high-level, non-procedural query language called TQuel. This language is a superset of Quel, a relational database query language, with additional syntax and semantics to incorporate time as an integral part of the language. A formal semantics with several useful properties relating to monitoring is presented.