An Agent-Based Requirements Monitoring Framework for Internetware

Running in a complicated, open and highly-dynamic environment, Internetware systems are likely to deviate from their requirements specification. In recent years, there have been a series of researches on runtime requirements monitoring and self-repairing based on goal-oriented requirements models and goal reasoning. However, a practical implementation framework for requirements monitoring and repairing, which supports typical Internetware characteristics like distribution and sociality, is still missing. In this paper, we propose an agent-based requirements monitoring framework for Internetware. The monitoring agents in the framework are able to monitor host systems on internal goal satisfaction and cross-agent goal delegation at runtime, and perform actuate repairing actions based on customized policies when requirements deviations are detected in a non-intrusive manner. The framework organizes monitoring agents in a decentralized way and supports cross-system goal delegation, requirements monitoring and self-repairing with inter-agent communication and interaction. To evaluate the effectiveness of our framework, we’ve conducted a case study with an online product booking system. The results show that the framework can effectively alleviate potential system failures in various self-reparing scenarios.