Springer computing special issue: adaptation in service-oriented and Cloud Computing

Abstract

Service-oriented computing has enabled the seamless integration of existing software in a unifiedmanner. Moreover, it has enabled a common paradigm accepted and well understood by both business and information systems experts, on the one hand, and computer science and IT providers on the other. The service paradigm allowed for better interaction between these communities, which inevitably led to improved cooperation and united efforts towards enabling businesses with the appropriate IT support. Since recently, technologies enabling service-oriented architectures and service-based systems are considered main stream by the major IT providers. Despite the enormous support of the service-oriented paradigm however, there are still challenges identified by both industry and academia. In the last years, one of the major challenges in service-orientation has been adaptation. The literature shows a broad spectrum of research ranging from adaptation on the level of services,service compositions, or service middleware, to approaches tailored for particular domains. Significant research results have been presented in the areas of engineering of adaptable service-based systems and systematic approaches for supporting their whole life cycle, adaptation mechanisms and adaptation needs, realization in terms of technologies and tools, identification of best practices andprinciples, defining relationships to non-functional properties, context and monitoring. Existing literature has identified adaptation as current and future challenge in particular with respect to distributed service-oriented systems for different application domains. The current focus on Cloud computing broadened this spectrum even further. Besides, the relationship between service-based application and Cloud Computing provided an additional motivation for future research in the direction of adaptability of service-based systems.