Role(s): Customer, Service Provider

Component(s):                     Workflow Designer

Workflow Enactor

Workflow Representation

Toolkit(s):                            Service Broker

Semantic Enhanced Service Polishing and Registry

License: GPLv3

The SLA Management Framework comes for two software platforms, .Net and GT4 (Java). There fore, the installation section will consist of two parts, one for .Net and another one for GT4. If you are installing under a GT4 platform go directly to section B.2.2.

Usage Instructions

Installation Requirements

Deployment Tips

Software Installations

Usage Instructions

The basic aim of the Workflow Management Framework is the modelling enactment and concretization of abstract workflows. Basically, it is composed of all the components related to workflow modelling and enacting, plus those required for service publishing, discovery and selection.

The Workflow Management Framework involves the Workflow Designer, the Workflow Enactor and all the components coming from the Service Broker and the Service Publishing toolkits. So, from the Service Broker toolkit the components are the Service Discovery Registry (SDR), the Semantically Enhanced Service Selector (SESS), and the SLA Translator. From the Service Publishing toolkit the components are the SATSLA Repository, the SLA Translator, the SATSLA GUI, and the Service Discovery Registry GUI (SDR GUI). The relationships between the components are shown in next Figure.

The process of publishing services, creating and enacting a workflow consists of a sequence of actions. Some of them are performed by the Service Providers, some others by the Customer.

Service Provider and Customer interact with the framework components generally as follows:

1.The Service Provider describes the service profile through the Workflow Designer;

2.The Service Provider uses the Service Discovery Registry GUI to register the service profile;

3.The Service Provider describes the SLA templates through the SATSLA GUI, registers the templates, and associates the templates to the already registered service (done at step 1);

4.The Customer takes advantage of the Workflow Designer to create the workflow to enact;

5.The Customer enacts the workflow.

Once the command to enact a workflow is issued, by the Workflow Enactor Command Line Interface (CLI) or through the Workflow Designer, the enactment process proceeds as follows:

6.The Workflow Enactor extracts the profile of a n abstract service from the workflow;

7.The Workflow Enactor searches for available services (able to concretise the abstract service) contacting the Service Discovery Registry;

8.The Workflow Enactor selects a service through the SESS, which does the selection considering the available SLA templates.

The interactions required with external components to complete the enactment process are as follows:

9.The Workflow Enactor negotiates the SLA contacting the SLA Negotiator (SLA Management Framework);

10.The Workflow Enactor confirms the acceptance of the SLA (the contract) contacting the Contract Commitment Support (CCS) (Business Relationship Framework);

11.The Workflow Enactor invokes the service (eventually) through the customer / provider Gateways (Messaging Infrastructure Framework).

An overall view of the Workflow Management Framework internal relationships and other relationships with external components is presented in next figure..

Installation Requirements

·Workflow Designer, Workflow Representation, and Workflow Enactor: Java 6 or higher;

·SESS and SLA Translator: Java 5 or higher, Tomcat 5.5 or higher;

·Service Discovery Registry: Windows Platform, Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 or higher, IIS with WCF capability enabled, Java 5 or higher, Tomcat 5.5 or higher;

·SATSLA Repository: Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 and on Microsoft SQL Server;

·SATSLA GUI: Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5.

Deployment Tips

The Workflow Designer, the Workflow Representation and the Workflow Enactor are application and libraries that interact closely. For this reason they are supposed to be installed in the same host. The SESS and the SLA Translator, as Web services, can be installed in different hosts. In general, it is recommended to install both the SESS and the SLA Translator in the same host as the one for the Workflow Designer, Workflow Representation and Workflow Enactor. SATSLA GUI, SATSLA Repository, and the SLA Translator (service provider instance) are generally installed in the same host. Normally this is a host provided by the Service Provider. In practice, the Service Provider uses these components to edit SLA templates, representing contracts, for each of the services they want to expose. SLA Templates can contain sensible terms that may be better to maintain stored in an inter-organization component. A different approach applies for the Service Discovery Registry. This components being a registry is generally installed in a third-party organisation providing discovery services to customers. The Service Discovery Registry can also be deployed in more then one instance in different hosts. This way it is possible to achieve a distributed network of service registries, and the discovery of services is improved since performed through this network (see Figure 46).

Service invocations through the Workflow Enactor are better if performed adding communication security (in- and out-going messages). This can be achieved installing an instance of the Gateway component in the Customer Infrastructure. This also grants virtualization of the invoked services endpoint references (EPRs).

 Software Installation

The Workflow Management Framework installer installs all the applications / components required for the modelling, enactment and concretization of abstract workflows. The installer firstly installs the Service Broker toolkit, then the Service Publishing toolkit and finally the Workflow Designer, the Workflow Enactor and the Service Discovery Registry. For more details on the Service Broker and the Service Publishing toolkits refers to the specific toolkits installation manuals. Installation of the Workflow Designer, the Workflow Representation, and the Workflow Enactor is described in the following sections.

The list of installers:

·        Workflow Framework: SetupVIM&SWPT.exe, this installer will install all the individual components of the framework. The toolkits must be installed separately with their own installers, for more information refer to the toolkit installation manuals.

·        Workflow Designer: SetupSWPT.exe This installer will individually install the designer.

·        Workflow Enactor:  SetupVIM.exe This installer will individually install the Enactor.

The last two installer are for individual component installation, this has been done for cases where the whole framework is not needed.

                - Workflow Designer Installation

               - Workflow Enactor Installation

               - SLAT Installation

               - Semantic Enhanced Service Polishing and Registry Installation