Understanding the Runtime Topology of Service-Oriented Systems

Through their dynamic and loosely coupled nature, service-oriented systems are ideal for realizing runtime evolvable systems. However, runtime evolution demands proper understanding of the configuration of service-oriented software systems over time. In order to keep system disturbance as low as possible while replacing existing services with their newer versions, engineers require an adequate illustration of how the connections and dependencies of services change in the running system. That way, they can identify the most appropriate point in the service-oriented systems´ operation time for maintenance. In this paper, we make use of the runtime topology (i.e. the configuration of a distributed, dynamically compos able software system which describes available services and how they depend and interact with each other) to help software engineers understand service-oriented systems, and we describe a tool, Serviz, that visualizes how services are activated, and how much they interact over time. A user study demonstrates to which extent the runtime topology can support the analysis and understanding of service-oriented software systems.