Automating WS-Agreement Monitoring

An SLA (Service Level Agreement) is an agreement between the web service provider and web service consumer that specifies a mutually agreed level of service quality, functional properties of a web service and business assumptions. WS-Agreement is a standard form of SLA for specifying agreement between service provider and service consumer. In WS-Agreement specification, the level of service quality, functional properties of a web service and business assumptions are termed as guarantee terms. Service provider and consumer need to be assured of the guarantee terms specified in the SLA at the time of service provisioning which can be done by SLA monitoring. A non-intrusive and service composition platform independent SLA monitoring is a real challenge. This paper proposes a protocol for specifying SLA guarantee terms using XML schema. Further, a non-intrusive and SBS composition platform independent monitoring framework has been proposed using a first order temporal logic based language called MSL, in order to ensure the WS-Agreement guarantee terms and monitor both functional and non-functional properties at run-time.