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A policy-definition language and prototype implementation library for policy-based autonomic systems

A policy-definition language and prototype implementation library for policy-based autonomic systems

Anthony, Richard (2006) A policy-definition language and prototype implementation library for policy-based autonomic systems. Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Autonomic Computing, June 13-16 2006 Dublin Ireland. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc., New York, pp. 265-276. ISBN 1424401755

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Abstract

This paper presents work towards generic policy toolkit support for autonomic computing systems in which the policies themselves can be adapted dynamically and automatically. The work is motivated by three needs: the need for longer-term policy-based adaptation where the policy itself is dynamically adapted to continually maintain or improve its effectiveness despite changing environmental conditions; the need to enable non autonomics-expert practitioners to embed self-managing behaviours with low cost and risk; and the need for adaptive policy mechanisms that are easy to deploy into legacy code.
A policy definition language is presented; designed to permit powerful expression of self-managing behaviours. The language is very flexible through the use of simple yet expressive syntax and semantics, and facilitates a very diverse policy behaviour space through both hierarchical and recursive uses of language elements.
A prototype library implementation of the policy support mechanisms is described. The library reads and writes policies in well-formed XML script. The implementation extends the state of the art in policy-based autonomics through innovations which include support for multiple policy versions of a given policy type, multiple configuration templates, and meta-policies to dynamically select between policy instances and templates. Most significantly, the scheme supports hot-swapping between policy instances.
To illustrate the feasibility and generalised applicability of these tools, two dissimilar example deployment scenarios are examined. The first is taken from an exploratory implementation of self-managing parallel processing, and is used to demonstrate the simple and efficient use of the tools. The second example demonstrates more-advanced functionality, in the context of an envisioned multi-policy stock trading scheme which is sensitive to environmental volatility

Item Type: Book Section
Additional Information: This paper forms part of the published proceedings from 3rd International Conference on Autonomic Computing (ICAC 2006) Dublin, IRELAND, 2006
Uncontrolled Keywords: policy-based computing, policy definition language, self-configuration, self-managment,
Subjects: Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science
Q Science > QA Mathematics
Pre-2014 Departments: School of Computing & Mathematical Sciences
School of Computing & Mathematical Sciences > Computer & Computational Science Research Group
School of Computing & Mathematical Sciences > Department of Computer Systems Technology
Related URLs:
Last Modified: 14 Oct 2016 09:02
URI: http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/957

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