Deriving a unified fault taxonomy for event-based systems

Abstract

Dependability and fault-tolerance, which are key requirements for business-or safety-critical applications, require explicit knowledge of potential faults that may occur within a system. In contrast to other major research directions, the emerging field of distributed event-based systems is yet lacking a common understanding of faults. In this paper we take a step forward and study potential origins and effects of faults in such systems. Our work on a unified fault taxonomy follows a rigorous methodology. We first identify five core sub-areas in the broader field of event-based systems, and discuss commonalities and differences among them. Then we derive from the existing literature a coherent domain model, which accurately captures the specifics of the different areas. The domain model provides a holistic view and covers both structural and procedural aspects of event-based systems. Based on this model, we elaborate a detailed taxonomy of faults, in line with well-established fault dimensions from dependable and secure computing. The fault taxonomy forms the basis for a comprehensive discussion of fault instances across the five sub-areas of event processing.

Testing of data‐centric and event‐based dynamic service compositions

“…We also plan to improve the test generation algorithm and to provide the tester with augmented control over the characteristics of the test optimization and execution. Finally, we are currently integrating the presented testing approach with our recent work on fault modelling in event‐based systems . The core idea is to obtain a more complete picture of the processing logic of event‐based service compositions (including event correlation, input–output functions or deployment topologies), in order to perform systematic tests, which aim at identifying common sources of faults.…”

Extended Fault Taxonomy of SOA-Based Systems

“…Web services execute remotely, whereas components are mostly downloaded to execute locally on the client and they have to deal with considerable heterogeneity in platforms middleware. Hummer et al [8] have also used well-established fault dimensions proposed by Avizienis et al [6], to elaborate a fault taxonomy for Event-based Systems (EBS) by discussing fault instances across the five sub-areas of event processing. Chan et al [9] have presented a fault taxonomy based upon [10] for web service composition that covers physical faults, development faults, and interaction faults.…”

Elastic stream processing in the Cloud

“…The core artifacts and terminology are illustrated in Figure . Various research subareas use slightly different terminology, hence Figure contains alternative terms (in brackets) for the core concepts. These terms are used interchangeably throughout the paper.…”