Overview - EU-Alive Project

New generations of networked applications based on the notion of software services that can be dynamically deployed, adjusted and composed will make it possible to create radically new types of software systems. In turn, this will require profound changes in the way in which software systems are designed, deployed and managed – exchanging existing, primarily top-down “design in isolation” engineering, to new approaches which are based on integrating new functionalities and behaviours into existing running systems of already active, distributed and interdependent processes.

The ALIVE project is based around the idea that many of the strategies used today to organise the vastly complex interdependencies found in human social, economic behaviour will be essential to structuring future service based software systems. More specifically the project aims to combine cutting edge Coordination and Organisation mechanisms (providing flexible, high-level means to model the structure of inter-actions between services in the environment) and Model Driven Design (providing for automated transformations from models into multiple target platforms) to create a framework for software and services engineering for “live” open systems of active services.

The paradigm explored and elaborated by ALIVE aims to become a foundational contribution to the future evolution of SOA applications and for networked software applications, improving not only the competiveness in the European software industry but also creating new business opportunities by giving support to a wide variety of distributed business scenarios.

Project approach

The project extends current trends in service-oriented engineering by adding three extra layers:

The Service Layer augments and extends existing service models in order to make components aware of their social context and of the rules of engagement with other services by doing extensive use of semantic web technologies.
The Coordination Layer provides the means to specify, at a high level, the patterns of interaction between services, using a variety of powerful coordination techniques from recent European research in the area.
The Organisational Layer provides context for the other levels – specifying the organizational rules that govern interaction and using recent developments in organizational dynamics to allow the structural adaptation of distributed systems over time.

The Model-Driven Engineering paradigm chosen in ALIVE will greatly help developers as it provides for automated transformations from models of these three levels to potentially multiple target platforms.

Expected Impact

ALIVE results will, in the long run:

Promote reliability and stability for service-oriented applications, by modeling multiple levels of a system, enabling designers to keep slowly changing elements separate from dynamic aspects of the application.
Provide a sound paradigm for the deployment of service-based applications across multiple organisations
Have the potential to structure service-based systems in such as way that they are easier to understand for non-technical individuals – paving the way for broader involvement in software and service design.

Coordination, Organisation and Model Driven Approaches for Dynamic, Flexible, Robust Software and Services Engineering