Governance-based management of open distributed systems

OF THE DISSERTATION Governance-Based Management of Open Distributed Systems by Wenxuan Zhang Dissertation Director: Naftaly H. Minsky Software technology is undergoing transition from monolithic systems constructed according to a single overall design, into open systems, i.e., loosely coupled distributed and heterogeneous systems, whose component parts may be written in different languages, run on different platforms, and be designed, constructed, or even maintained under different administrative domains. For an open system to be dependable it must be managed dynamically. The common approaches of managing open systems are based on industrial standards like WSDM (Web Services Distributed Management), and they rely on the components of the managed system to cooperate in the management process, by providing the managers with the means to monitor their state and activities, and to control their behaviour. We argue these standard-based approaches have some serious deficiencies, when applied to open systems, and it largely fails to meet some critical needs of good management. In particular, we believe (1) it is unreliable and inflexible; and (2) it does not have enough ability to handle what we call reflexive management, i.e., the ability to