A Programmble Fault Injection Testbed Generator for SOA

Abstract

Abstract. In this demo paper we present the prototype of our fault injection testbed generator. Our tool empowers engineers to generate emulated SOA environments and to program fault injection behavior on diverse levels: at the network layer, at the execution level, and at the message layer. Engineers can specify the structure of testbeds via scripts, attach fault models, and generate running testbed instances from that. As a result, our tool facilitates the setup of customizable testbeds for evaluating fault-handling mechanisms of SOA-based systems. MotivationToday service-oriented architectures (SOAs) do not only comprise Web services, clients, and brokers, but also diverse complex components that operate on distributed service-based environments, e.g., workflow engines executing business processes or governance systems managing whole large-scale systems. Usually, these components carry out critical tasks and, therefore, must be dependable. However, if one considers that SOA-based infrastructures often have complex dependency structures and each service is a potential fault source, it becomes obvious that single faults can trigger chains of harmful effects. Consequently, complex SOA components must provide fault handling mechanisms in order to guarantee a certain level of dependability.In our current research, we regard this challenge from the perspective of how such mechanisms can be evaluated in order to verify their correct execution. We argue that this can only be achieved by testing the developed component at runtime, in an environment which comprises faulty elements, and by observing the component's reaction on occurring faults. Yet, the main obstacle remains how to get access to such an environment which exhibits faulty behavior and, therefore, can be used as a testbed infrastructure. As a contribution to solving this issue we have developed the Genesis2 testbed generator framework and extended it with fault emulation techniques. Our tool provides SOA engineers the facility to generate customizable testbeds for evaluating their complex components. Fault Injection Testbed Generator FrameworkThe presented prototype uses the Genesis2 testbed generator framework [1] (in short, G2) as a base grounding for emulating testbeds for SOA. Engineers model