Web Services Endpoint Management Architecture Requirements Draft

 

Contributors

Heather Kreger, IBM (kreger@us.ibm.com)

Mark Potts, Talking Blocks (mark.potts@talkingblocks.com)

Igor Sedukhin, Computer Associates (igor.sedukhin@ca.com)

Hao He, Thomson (hao.he@thomson.com.au)

Zulah Eckert, Hewlett Packard (zulah_eckert@hp.com)

Yin-Leng Husband, Hewlett Packard (Yin-Leng.Husband@hp.com)

 

 

Document History

February 12, 2003 – Heather Kreger, extracted this document from the MTF Working Draft

February 19, 2003 – Heather Kreger accepted all changes from MTF Editing calls 2/12-2/19.

February 26, 2003 – Heather Kreger, edited glossary based on MTF call.

February 28, 2003 – Heather Kreger, edited based on Igor Sedukhin’s edits.

 

 

Table of Contents

1      Introduction. 2

1.1       From the Goals: 3

1.2       From the Requirements: 3

1.3       Scope. 4

1.3.1        Management Capabilities Categories. 5

1.3.2        Access. 5

1.3.3        Discovery. 5

1.4       Not in Scope. 5

2      Management Concepts. 6

3      Manageable Components. 6

3.1       Management Capabilities for all elements. 6

3.1.1.1     Identification. 6

3.1.1.2     Configuration. 6

3.1.1.3     Status. 7

3.1.1.4     Events. 7

3.1.1.4.1    Service State Change Events. 7

3.1.1.4.2    Request Processing Events. 7

3.1.1.5     Metrics. 7

3.1.1.6     Access Requirements. 8

3.1.1.7     Discovery Requirements. 8

3.2       Manageability Requirements for Web Service Architecture Elements. 8

3.2.1        Web Service Endpoint Manageability Requirements. 8

3.2.1.1     Identification Requirements. 8

3.2.1.2     Configuration Requirements. 9

3.2.1.3     Associations. 9

3.2.1.4     Metrics Requirements. 9

3.2.1.4.1    For Service Endpoints. 10

3.2.1.4.2    For Operations. 10

3.2.1.5     Operations Requirements. 11

3.2.1.6     Events Requirements. 11

4      Appendix: Glossary. 12

 

1         Introduction

The W3C Web Services Architecture Working Group has been formed to document the Web Services Architecture. Enough members of the Working Group felt that it was very important to define the manageability characteristics of the architecture along side the architecture itself. To that end, the following Goals, Requirements, and Critical Success factors were added to the Web Services Architecture Requirements document.

This paper is a draft of the architectural satisfaction of those requirements. The contents of this document should be folded into the main Web Services Architecture draft (http://www.w3.org/TR/ws-arch/ ). This draft not intended to ‘stand alone’ and independent of the Web Services Architecture document.

We would like this proposal to be included as a subsection in the Management Properties section of the Web Services Architecture.

For convenience, the Manageability Goals from the Requirements document (http://www.w3.org/TR/wsa-reqs ) are reiterated here:

1.1      From the Goals:

D-AG007 Management and Provisioning

The standard reference architecture for Web Services must provide for a manageable, accountable and organized environment for Web Services operations..

Critical success factors and requirements for this goal:

D-AC018 The Web Services Architecture must enable the management and provisioning of Web Services

1.2      From the Requirements:

D-AC018

The Web Services Architecture must enable the management and provisioning of Web Services

o        AC018.1 Ensure that implementations of the Web Services Architecture are manageable.

§         AR018.1.1 Define a base set of standard metrics for architectural components and their interactions accompanied by guidelines for measurement.

§         AR018.1.2 Define a base set of standard management operations for Web Services Architecture implementations. Management operations includes, but is not limited to, support for configuration control and lifecycle control.

§         AR018.1.3 Define a base set of management events to be issued by the Web Services Architecture implementation.

§         AR018.1.4 Define a standard methodology for accessing management capabilities from the Web Services Architecture implementation.

o        AC018.2 Ensure that implementations of the Web Service instances are manageable.

§         AR018.2.1 Define how a web service should expose web service specific metrics, configuration, operations, and events.

§         AR018.2.2 Support the discovery of web service management capabilities.

§         AR018.2.3 Define a standard methodology for accessing management capabilities of a Web Service through the Web Services Architecture implementation.

o        AC018.3 Ensure that at least the following types of management aspects are supported: Resource Accounting, Usage Auditing and Tracking, Performance Monitoring, Availability, Configuration, Control, Security Auditing and Administration, and Service Level Agreements.

1.3      Scope

As a result of these Goals and Requirements, we have identified the scope of this work to be defining the architecture necessary to make a Web service architecture implementation and a Web service implementation manageable. In order for the Web service architecture to be manageable, each of the elements of the architecture must be manageable. This submission defines only the requirements for the Web service endpoint.

The management architecture must define the requirements for the minimum, basic information, operations, events, and behaviors that a Web services architectural element must support in order to be called manageable. Not all elements may be explicitly manageable.  Not all implementations of Web services architectural elements must be manageable. Support of this manageable Web services architecture by implementations of the Web services architecture is highly recommended, but not required.

Security administration and security management are important aspects of management. These aspects are being addressed by other standards groups and will not be addressed by this draft. The exception to this is the requirement to support association of security administration WSDL with the functional service WSDL.

This architecture applies to the instrumentation of manageable Web Services. It does not prescribe how the management capabilites are used by management systems. For example, policies could be defined an implemented via management capabilities of Web services, although this architecture does not prescribe how to define and enforce those policies.

1.3.1      Management Capabilities Categories

The following management capabilities categories must be defined for each manageable entity:

1.3.2      Access

In addition to defining the information to be exposed by a manageable element, this architecture must define a standard means to access the management capabilities of the manageable element.

1.3.3      Discovery

Finally, it must be possible for the manageability capabilities and access to those capabilities to be discovered. Hence we need to define discovery of managable elements, manageability capabilities, and relationships.

1.4      Not in Scope

Management Systems – This architecture will not define what management systems should be defined to manage the Web services. Nor will it define how they should be implemented nor the way they will use the management capabilities. However, this specification may mention such systems as part of a scenario or use case.

Service distribution/installation/deployment – This architecture will not define how Web service component implementations are distributed, installed or deployed into any system or set of systems.

Access rights and control – This architecture will not define the policies (access control, trust, etc.) that govern management information flow.

Mapping of requirements to an XML Schema or WSDL portType – This architecture will not define an explicit XML Schema or portTypes to represent the informational requirements.

2         Management Concepts

We are defining the sufficient set of management capabilities for the architectural element Web services endpoint.

Manageability implies the existence of a sufficient set of management capabilities such that an entity is manageable

Manageable implies that an entity can be managed by a management system

Management capabilities includes identification, configuration, metrics, status, operations, and events offered by manageable entities for management purposes

Management is the utilization of the management capabilities by the management system.

Managed implies that an entity is actively being managed by a management system

Manageability Interface is that interface through which management capabilities are offered.

Management endpoint is the Web services endpoint offering the manageability interface for management purposes.

 

3         Manageable Components

 

3.1      Management Capabilities for all elements

This section defines the basic management capabilities, access, and discovery requirements. Management capabilities includes: identification, status, configuration, metrics, operations, and events.

All of the management capabilities must be expressible using the XML Information set (http://www.w3.org/TR/xml-infoset/ ).

3.1.1.1     Identification

Manageable elements of the Web services Architecture are identifiable by a URI.

The description of the management capabilities for a manageable element is identifiable by a URI.

3.1.1.2     Configuration

Configuration mechanisms that are common for each type of manageable element [e.g. Web service endpoint] should conform to the Web services architecture [e.g. description and interaction]. Configuration for a manageable element, beyond the common configuration, should be defined by an administrative interface. Other mechanisms to configure elements of the Web services architecture exist, but are not in scope of this document.

3.1.1.3     Status

Lifecycle and state diagrams are defined by the Web Services Architecture based on the submission from the Management Task Force: http://www.w3.org/2002/ws/arch/2/11/W3C.MTF.ServiceLifecycle.20021111_clean.htm. Status is information about the current state of the managed element.

The status of a managed element must be available through a manageability interface.

3.1.1.4     Events

For a manageable element there are two classes of events: Service State Changed and Request Processing events.

3.1.1.4.1        Service State Change Events

Service state change events occur whenever lifecycle state transitions happen as defined by the WSA draft. The service state change event description should include the previous state and the transition time. Optionally there may be events from the start of a transition.

3.1.1.4.2        Request Processing Events

Request Processing Event descriptions provide information for management systems and can be used to calculate many of the metrics. However, manageable components are not required to use these events to calculate metrics or unconditionally disseminate them to management systems. In busy environments, these kinds of events can create a significant amount of overhead and implementations should take that into consideration.

A request processing event description indicates that the state of a request has been changed and should include the previous state and the transition time. The event may also include any context associated with the request, reply, or failure message and any part or the complete content of these messages.

A managed element should be capable of producing notifications (deliverable descriptions of these events) such that they are available to a management system.

3.1.1.5     Metrics

‘Metrics’ are raw atomic, unambiguous, information, e.g. number of invocations. This can be contrasted with ‘Measurements’ that are calculated with a formula based on metrics, e.g. Average response time during the last hour of execution.

The metrics requirements do not enforce any implementation pattern. A managed element should allow any available metrics and measurements to be reported according to configurable time intervals, such as cumulative, sliding window, and interval. A managed element must declare which interval types are supported.

3.1.1.6     Access Requirements

Management capabilities must be available in a manner conformant to Web Services architecture.

3.1.1.7     Discovery Requirements

Discovery has three requirements to be satisfied, discovery of the manageable element, and discovery of the management capabilities for a manageable element, and discovery of relationships.