ARTICLE IN PRESS
Future Generation Computer Systems ( ) –
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Future Generation Computer Systems
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/fgcs
Toward dynamic and attribute based publication, discovery and selection for
cloud computing
Andrzej Goscinski
∗
, Michael Brock
School of Information Technology, Deakin University, Pigdons Road, Waurn Ponds, 3217, Australia
a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 3 December 2009
Received in revised form
9 March 2010
Accepted 27 March 2010
Available online xxxx
Keywords:
Attribute based publication
Service discovery and selection
Ease of use
Clouds
Cloud computing
a b s t r a c t
Cloud computing is an emerging paradigm where computing resources are offered over the Internet
as scalable, on-demand (Web) services. While cloud vendors have concentrated their efforts on the
improvement of performance, resource consumption and scalability, other cloud characteristics have
been neglected. On the one hand cloud service providers face difficult problems of publishing services that
expose resources, and on the other hand cloud clients do not have the means for discovery and automatic
services’ selection, and easy use of services.
In response, proposed in this article is the application of the Resources Via Web Services framework
(RVWS) to offer higher level abstraction of clouds in the form of a new technology. Our new technology
makes possible the provision of service (and resource) publication, discovery and selection based on
dynamic attributes which express the current state and characteristics of cloud services and resources.
A proof of concept implementation that allowed the easy publication, discovery, selection and use of
an existing cluster (one of the most frequently used cloud resource) via a simple interface using Web pages
backed by extensive sets of tests has demonstrated that the design is sound and the proposed technology
is feasible. The proposed solution is significant: instead of spending time and effort locating, evaluating
and learning about clusters, clients are able to easily discover, select and use the required resources.
Furthermore, service providers (which can be entities external to clouds themselves) can easily publish
(and keep current) information about their services (and the resources behind them).
© 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
The future of computing lies in cloud computing, whose
major goal is reducing the IT services’ costs while increasing
processing throughput and decreasing processing time, increasing
reliability, availability and flexibility [1]. Cloud computing is a
new paradigm where computing resources (from data storage
to complete configurations of distributed systems) are made
available (offered) over the Internet as scalable, on-demand (Web)
services. Diagram 1 shows a general view of clouds (and their
resources) in relation to a client.
In cloud computing, the resources hosted within clouds can be
anything: they could be database services, virtual servers (virtual
machines), complete service workflows or complex configurations
of distributed computing systems such as clusters. Regardless of
their nature, all resources are provided via services to clients (users
or software processes) by computers rented from the cloud (such
as those offered by e.g., Amazon, Google, Microsoft), rather than by
private systems. The services are provided on demand and clients
∗
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: ang@deakin.edu.au (A. Goscinski), brock@deakin.edu.au
(M. Brock).
only pay for the quantity of resources (data storage, computation,
etc.) they use.
In addition to services and resources, cloud computing has
providers of two forms: service providers and cloud providers. A
cloud provider is the entity that offers and maintains a cloud and
may offer internally developed services on the cloud. A service
provider is an entity that creates and maintains services that are
published in and ran on clouds. For example, a service provider
may not have the capita to host its own services hence rents space
on a cloud to reduce costs.
An analysis of products and services released by Microsoft [2],
Amazon [3], Google [4] and Salesforce [5–7], the best known
cloud service providers, shows that clouds fall into a number
of categories: applications (Software as a Service—SaaS), platform
(Platform as a Service—PaaS) and hardware (Infrastructure as a
Service—IaaS).
In the SaaS category, there is delivery of use-specific services
over the Internet (such as CRM software and email). The benefit of
SaaS clouds is that clients only focus on the use of the software and
do not have to worry about the cost and effort to keep software
licenses current nor the handling of software updates. However,
SaaS clouds are not without their risks. The decision on whether
or not to deploy software updates are finalized by the providers
themselves. Thus, if an update to a software services makes a client
0167-739X/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.future.2010.03.009
Please cite this article in press as: A. Goscinski, M. Brock, Toward dynamic and attribute based publication, discovery and selection for cloud computing, Future Generation
Computer Systems (2010), doi:10.1016/j.future.2010.03.009
