Orquestación automática de servicios convergentes

Abstract

Background: A widely adopted solution in order to obtain a low Time to Market by a segment of Telecommunication operators is the use of the concept of service composition because their philosophy is to reuse software components previously implemented. The composition has two phases, the synthesis and orchestration, the second being a challenge to converged services because it requires extensive technical knowledge and experience. Currently, there are proposals that automate the orchestration adapting Web technologies like BPEL, however they perform the orchestration at runtime so the execution performance is affected. This involves finding new orchestration techniques for converged services.

Aims: To propose mechanisms that automate the orchestration of abstract processes at design time, to support the services composition in converged environments.

Methods: To meet the objective were defined four phases, the first corresponded to the selection of two formal representations, one for abstract processes (synthesis) and the other for executable services (orchestration). In the second phase it was used a method for defining two sets of specific patterns to compose converged services, one for control flow and the other for data flow. In the third phase were proposed the mechanism and algorithms that automate the orchestration from an abstract process, and generate an executable service over JSLEE environment. Finally in the fifth phase was conducted an evaluation of the mechanism defined, through the orchestration of a converged service using the implemented prototype, besides the performance of the mechanism was evaluated.

Results: This proposal presents the following results: the definition of graphs and colored Petri nets, to formally represent the synthesis and the orchestration of converged services respectively. A set of 13 control patterns and 16 data patterns to represent specifically converged services. An automatic orchestration mechanism based on an algorithm that uses the patterns and formal representations defined. An experimental evaluation showed the proper functioning of the mechanism at the discretion of expert referees, and also performance values of the mechanism in processing times, memory usage and CPU load.

Conclusions: The experimental assessment proved correct functioning of the automatic orchestration mechanism. A service can be orchestrated at around 150ms and it is possible to orchestrate simultaneously up to 4 services, this value can be improved by implementing a direct connection to the service repository, which limits the number of connections and therefore affects the mechanism. However the mechanism provides benefits to telecom operators, allowing them to generate convergent services very quick and easily from an abstract process, avoiding the difficult task of manually orchestrating services on JSLEE environments, which implies extensive technical knowledge and experience about installation, configuration and development.