The document discusses integrating the USDL (Unified Service Description Language) and TOSCA (Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications) standards to automate parts of the lifecycle of cloud applications. It proposes using Linked USDL to provide unique identifiers and access service descriptions, and using TOSCA to describe application deployment and management in an executable way. The approach aims to enable discovery, selection, deployment and management of cloud applications through the combined use of USDL and TOSCA. It also discusses challenges around routing service requests, dynamic binding of descriptors, and achieving interoperability between the two standards.

1. Jorge Cardoso (1,2), Tobias Binz (3), Uwe Breitenbucher (3), Oliver Kopp (3) Frank Leymann (3)
(1) CISUC/Dept. Informatics Engineering, University of Coimbra, Portugal
(2) Karlsruhe Service Research Institute, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany
jorge.cardoso@kit.edu
jcardoso@dei.uc.pt
(3) Institute of Architecture of Application Systems, University of Stuttgart, Germany
{lastname}@iaas.uni-stuttgart.de
Cloud Computing Automation:
Integrating USDL and TOSCA
Departamento de Engenharia Informática
FCTUC FACULDADE DE CIÊNCIAS E TECNOLOGIA da UNIVERSIDADE DE COIMBRA
Institute of Architecture of Application Systems (IAAS)
Universität Stuttgart, Germany
Cloud Computing Automation: Integrating USDL and TOSCA, J. Cardoso,T. Binz, U.
Breitenbucher, O. Kopp, F. Leymann, CAiSE 2013, Springer, LNCS 7908, pp. 1—16.

2. Standardization
2013 Genessiz: Center for Large-Scale Service System Research 2
See also http://cloud-standards.orgBMWi: The standardisation environment for cloud computing. Technical report, Germany
Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (Feb. 2012)

3. Interoperability
• Standards are being
developed in isolation
• It is not clear to which
extend they can be
integrated
• Lack of certainty as to
which standards can
inter-operate
• Streamline the lifecycle
of cloud applications
2013 Genessiz: Center for Large-Scale Service System Research 3
Standardization
does not
imply interoperability
Definition (Interoperability): the ability of various systems
and organizations to work together (inter-operate)

4. Motivation (1)
• Discovery, Selection and
Customization
– Done manually by consumers
• Keyword querying
– No advanced mechanism
• Multiple queries
– Different marketplaces use
different query interfaces
2013 Genessiz: Center for Large-Scale Service System Research 4
AppDirect
Google

5. Motivation (2)
• After a purchase decision...
– Customization
– Deployment
– Management
• No …
• Formalization of the
executables
• Management best practices
• Etc.
• Problem
– Manual
– Error-prone
2013 Genessiz: Center for Large-Scale Service System Research 5
Exceptions: Saleforce, Google Apps,
Microsoft Office 365, etc.

6. BMWi: The standardisation environment for cloud computing. Technical report, Germany
Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (Feb. 2012)
“In the course of the six
months in which the study
was produced, a lot of new
publications appeared, not
all of which could be taken
into account”
(e. g. TOSCA,
http://www.oasis-
open.org/committees/tosca/)
6

7. Research Question
2013 Genessiz: Center for Large-Scale Service System Research 7
When used in conjunction, can they automate
parts of the lifecycle of cloud applications,
namely discovery, selection, deployment, and
management?
Can USDL and TOSCA be integrated seamlessly?
How can interoperability be achieved?
What are the challenges?

8. Approach
2013 Genessiz: Center for Large-Scale Service System Research 8
DISCOVERY
AND
SELECTION
DEPLOYMENT
AND
MANAGEMENT
USDL/Service Description
TOSCA/Service Management
Use Case

9. Describes the structure of an
application and its management
(which is executable)
Goal >>
Portability and full-automated
management of applications
Describes the functional and non-
functional requirements, capabilities,
and interactions of a service
Goal >>
Description of a cloud service to make
it searchable, comparable, and
tradable
Topology Management Plans
…
Interaction &
functional capabilities
Offerings
Interactions
Providers
…
Non-functional
capabilities
Pricing
Legal
Service Level
Topology and Orchestration Specification
for Cloud Applications

10. 2013 Genessiz: Center for Large-Scale Service System Research 10
USDL:Core
Master Schema

11. Linked USDL
2013 Genessiz: Center for Large-Scale Service System Research 11
http://www.linked-usdl.org/ https://github.com/linked-usdl/

12. TOSCA
2013 Genessiz: Center for Large-Scale Service System Research 12
OsApache
(OperatingSystem)
VmApache
(VirtualMachine)
ApacheWebServer
(ApacheWebServer)
(HostedOn)(InstalledIn)
SugarCrmApp
(SugarCrmApp)
PhpModule
(PhpModule)
(DependsOn)
OsMySql
(OperatingSystem)
VmMySql
(VirtualMachine)
MySql
(MySqlRDBMS)
SugarCrmDb
(SugarCrmDb)
(HostedOn)
(DbConnection)
Acquire
VM
Install
OS on
VM
Install &
Start Web
Server
Install
PHP
Module
Deploy
PHP
App Establish
DB
ConnectionInstall
OS on
VM
Install & Start
MySQL
RDBMS
Create
SugarCRM
DB Module
Build Plan
Topology
Acquire
VM
SugarCRM

13. Solution
• How to access service descriptions in a dynamic world?
– Global service identification and service description access
using Linked USDL
• What if the provider has ceased its operations and
transferred its obligations to some other provider? Who still
handle the original functions?
• Intelligent routing of service requests
• What would happen if the TOSCA descriptor associated
with a USDL description would no longer be valid?
– Dynamic binding of deployment descriptors
2013 Genessiz: Center for Large-Scale Service System Research 13
WWW + Semantic web = Distributed, scalable, reliable,
extensible, …[11]

14. Service Cloud
USDL-based Marketplace
USDL-based Service Offerings
Billing / CRM System
UI
…
Service 1
Service N
TOSCA-based Provider
TOSCA Service Archives
T
T
…
Service 1
Service N
TOSCA Runtime Environment
Global
Routing
Layer
Local
Routing
Layer
Cloud Management System
USDL URI … Provider Endpoint
http://sugarcrm.org?enterprise … 192.182.1.3
http://redmine.org?professional … 147.11.4.79
TOSCA Routing Layer
USDL URI … Plan Endpoint
http://sugarcrm.org?enterprise … 111.121.12.1/SugarCRMPlan
http://redmine.org?professional … 111.121.12.1/RedminePlan
SIOPP
Architecture
Reasoning
Engine
Reasoning
Engine
Routing
Table
Routing
Table
5
4
32
1
6
7
14

15. Service Identification & Access
2013 Genessiz: Center for Large-Scale Service System Research
15
Cloud
USDL-compliant
http://rdfs.genssiz.org/SugarCRM?
pricePlan=pricing_SugarCRM_Ultimate
5
4
3
2
1
Query strings
are a W3C recommendation
Service offerings are
modeled with Linked USDL
A. Simple way to create unique global
identifiers for services. Compared to,
e.g., a universally unique identifier
(UUID), Linked USDL URIs are more
adequate to service distribution
networks since they are managed
locally by service providers
B. The HTTP URI also serves as endpoint
to provide uniform data access to the
service description. A Linked USDL URI
can be used by, e.g., RDF search engines,
and web query agents looking for cloud
service descriptions
6

16. Benefits
• Global service identification and remote description access
– Unique service identification schema using Linked USDL URIs
– Uniform data access [12] to service descriptions using Linked USDL HTTP URIs
– Decentralized management of unique service identifiers is scalable
• Intelligent routing of service requests
– SPARQL for the content-based routing [14]
– Flexible querying mechanism (cf. web APIs)
– Full access to the service specifications is possible remotely
• Dynamic binding of deployment descriptors
– Publish-subscribe pattern [15]
– Scalable by distributing USDL requests to TOSCA Runtime Environments
– Higher degree of decoupling (cf. BPM or integration by web services)
2013 Genessiz: Center for Large-Scale Service System Research 16

17. Intelligent Routing of Service
Requests
• Separation of Concerns (routing logic)
– GRL -- high level information
• e.g., information about the country of the provider for legal aspects
– LRL -- lower level aspects
• e.g., load balancing information
– TRL -- management actions
• e.g., implementing security aspecTOSCA ts directly in management plans
2013 Genessiz: Center for Large-Scale Service System Research 19
Runtime Environment
TOSCA Routing Layer
Marketplace
Global Routing Layer
Provider
Local Routing Layer
Service 1
Service 2
…

18. Intelligent Routing of Service
Requests
2013 Genessiz: Center for Large-Scale Service System Research 20
20
TOSCA-based Provider
TOSCA Service Archives
T
T
…
Service 1
Service N
TOSCA Runtime Environment
Local
Routing
Layer
TOSCA Routing Layer
USDL URI … Plan Endpoint
http://sugarcrm.org?enterprise … 111.121.12.1/SugarCRMPlan
http://redmine.org?professional … 111.121.12.1/RedminePlan
Reasoning
Engine
Routing
Table
5
4
6
7
Acquire
VM
Install
OS on
VM
Install &
Start Web
Server
Install
PHP
Module
Deploy
PHP
App
Establish
DB
Connection
Install
OS on
VM
Install & Start
MySQL RDBMS
Create
SugarCRM
DB Module
Build Plan
Acquire
VM
A SPARQL query to inquire
about the options
input message used by the build plan
to deploy SugarCRM on Amazon EC2

19. Benefits
• Global service identification and remote description access
– Unique service identification schema using Linked USDL URIs
– Uniform data access [12] to service descriptions using Linked USDL HTTP URIs
– Decentralized management of unique service identifiers is scalable
• Intelligent routing of service requests
– SPARQL for the content-based routing [14]
– Flexible querying mechanism (cf. web APIs)
– Full access to the service specifications is possible remotely
• Dynamic binding of deployment descriptors
– Publish-subscribe pattern [15]
– Scalable by distributing USDL requests to TOSCA Runtime Environments
– Higher degree of decoupling (cf. BPM or integration by web services)
2013 Genessiz: Center for Large-Scale Service System Research 21

20. Performance
• Settings
– Win7-64bit, JRE 1.7, Intel i5-2410M, 2,3GHz.
– GRL: hash table with 500,000 entries and looked up 5,000 entries
– LRL: hash table with 10,000 entries and looked up 1,000 entries
• GRL: 3 ms
• LRL: 2 ms
• Build plan adaptation: 289 ms (σ = 76)
• Deployment: 4-7 min
– Depends on the provisioning
time of the VMs at Amazon EC2
• Conclusions
– In our scenario, the overhead, even for peak demands, is negligible
2013 Genessiz: Center for Large-Scale Service System Research 23

21. Limitations
• Scalability
– Adopt a peer-to-peer architecture using an overlay network
• e.g., use the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS)
– Network partitioned according to service domains
• e.g., healthcare, finance, and logistics
– Route requests domain to domain/subdomains using SKOS
• e.g., skos:narrower and skos:member
• Customization
– The customization string works well with simple customization
– Inadequate for condition-based based customization
• i.e. if logical conditions need to be sent along with service requests
• Inputs to build plans
– Associating USDL URIs with concrete input values for build plans has been found to
be difficult if there is no description on how the values affect the deployment
2013 Genessiz: Center for Large-Scale Service System Research 24

22. Conclusion
• We explored the interoperability of two cloud specifications
– Linked USDL and TOSCA
• Solution
– Open and decentralized
– Semantic web and Linked Data technologies
– Link description/customization with deployment/management
• Results
– Interoperability is possible
– End-to-end solutions can be developed
– Engineered solution
– Support the lifecycle of cloud services
2013 Genessiz: Center for Large-Scale Service System Research 25

23. Thank You
for Listening

24. References
• 10. Cardoso, J.; Barros, A.; May, N. and Kylau, U.Towards a Unified Service
Description Language for the Internet of Services: Requirements and First
Developments. In IEEE International Conference on Services Computing, IEEE
Computer Society Press, Florida, USA, 2010.
• 11. Hors, A.L., Nally, M.: Using read/write Linked Data for Application Integration:
Towards a Linked Data Basic Profile. In: Linked Data on the Web (2012)
• 12. Ziegler, P., Dittrich, K.:Three decades of data intecration – all problems solved?
In: Jacquart, R. (ed.) Building the Information Society. IFIP, vol. 156, pp. 3–12.
Springer, Boston (2004)
• 14. Carzaniga, A., Rutherford, M.J.,Wolf, A.L.: A routing scheme for content-based
networking. In: Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM 2004, Hong Kong, China (2004)
• 15. Hohpe, G.,Woolf, B.: Enterprise Integration Patterns: Designing, Building, and
Deploying Messaging Solutions. Addison-Wesley, Boston (2003)
2013 Genessiz: Center for Large-Scale Service System Research 27

25. 2013 Genessiz: Center for Large-Scale Service System Research 28

26. BMWi: The standardisation environment for cloud computing. Technical report, Germany
Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (Feb. 2012)
Standardization
Fig 7. Involvement of the
standardisation organisations
in cloud computing
29

27. Lifecycle
2013 Genessiz: Center for Large-Scale Service System Research 30
12 steps towards creating a cloud service

28. 2013 Genessiz: Center for Large-Scale Service System Research 31
challengers leaders
niche players visionaries
Complexity of the model
Completenessofthemodel
OWL-S
WSDL
SAWSDL
hREST
WSMO-Lite
USDL v1
USDL v2
Linked USDL
USDL v3
microWSMO
REST

29. 2013 Genessiz: Center for Large-Scale Service System Research 32
Complexity vs Acceptance
http://craft.de/simplizitaet/
WO IST WAS?
WSDL
OWL-S
WSMO
SAWDL
WSMO Lite
REST
hREST
microWSMO
„Ok, but I need more…“
„Nice improvement.“
„Cool“
„I‘m a hero“ „I have to look it up in the manual…“
„Where the heck do I find it?“
„I can‘t even do the
simplest things….“
I‘m a looser
Maximum Customer Satisfaction
COMPLEXITY
ACCEPTANCE

30. 2013 Genessiz: Center for Large-Scale Service System Research 33
Classes
Properties

31. LINKED USDL MODULES
• USDL-Core
• USDL-Pricing
• USDL-SLA
22.05.2013 Service Oriented Computing II – SS 2013
• Additional modules
– USDL-Legal
• Domain specific
– USDL-EDU
– USDL-Logistics

32. TOSCA
2013 Genessiz: Center for Large-Scale Service System Research 35
Service Structure Service Orchestration for
Deployment & Management
Start VM
Install
Tomcat
OperatingSystem
(Ubuntu 12.04 LTS)
VirtualServer
(AWS EC2 Server)
WebServer
(Tomcat)
EC2

33. TOSCA Topology Concepts
2013 Genessiz: Center for Large-Scale Service System Research 36
Application
(WAR)
OperatingSystem
(Ubuntu 12.04 LTS)
VirtualServer
(AWS EC2 Server)
WebServer
(Tomcat)
EC2
Node Template
Relationship Template
Node Type
hosted-on
ubuntu.amiubuntu.ami
app.war
Deployment Artifacts
AppSpecific
Deploy
Start, Stop
installPkg
Terminate
CreateVM
execScript
Management Operations

34. SugarCRM/Use Case/Silver
2013 Genessiz: Center for Large-Scale Service System Research 37
OperatingSystem
(OperatingSystem)
VirtualMachine
(VirtualMachine)
(HostedOn)
ApacheWebServer
(ApacheWebServer)
(HostedOn)
SugarCrmApp
(SugarCrmApp)
(HostedOn)
PhpModule
(PhpModule)
(InstalledIn)
(DependsOn)
MySql
(MySqlRDBMS)
(HostedOn)
SugarCrmDb
(SugarCrmDb)
(HostedOn)
(MySqlDbConnection)

35. Intelligent Routing
• Listing 1.3 shows an example of an
input message used by the build plan to
deploy SugarCRM on Amazon EC2
(described in Section 3.4).
• The message contains credentials of the
Amazon account to be used (line 2 and
3), the geographic region where the
virtual machines should be located
(line 4), and a pointer to the USDL
offering (line 5).
• The USDL URI is used by the plan to
query the Linked USDL offering by
using SPARQL and adjust the
deployment.
• In our prototype, deciding between the
deployment options enterprise or
ultimate is done based on the selected
USDL pricing plan.
2013 Genessiz: Center for Large-Scale Service System Research 38
Acquire
VM
Install OS
on VM
Install & Start Web
Server
Install PHP
Module
Deploy PHP
App
Establish
DB Connection
Install OS
on VM
Install & Start MySQL RDBMS
Create
SugarCRM
DB Module
Build Plan
Acquire
VM

36. Intelligent Routing
• Listing 1.4 shows the SPARQL
query used by the build plan
to inquire about the options
which are attached to the
pricing plan included by the
(customized) USDL URI.
• The options are then installed
automatically.
2013 Genessiz: Center for Large-Scale Service System Research 39