Network Management using Abstracted XML Specifications

Establishing and managing network infrastructures between distributed nodes can be time consuming and risk prone. Such a statement is often re-enforced by the incorporation of new technologies, the merging of existing systems and the rotation of subsystems. However, the functional requirements of these enterprises remain constant, even though implementation specifics may differ greatly.

The driving force behind this project is to investigate the addition of an extra level of abstraction between the operation and implementation of such nodes within distributed environments. Such an abstraction has the advantage of being sufficiently withdrawn from specific node level details to allow subsystems to be interchanged, whilst maintaining the required behaviour. Utilising these high level descriptions, being specified in a generic syntax, a scope for simulation is introduced. Automated analysis could attempt to model the interactions between nodes and subsystems, leading onto validation of security, performance and scalability.

The abstracted descriptions of the services should not be simply a static description of the rules, but include functionality to enable more complex interactions. It will allow dependencies to be created between configuration segments, so that where necessary, the description of one service can be automatically generated taking into account the configuration of other nodes and components.

Please see the pages on my old website for details on this project.

See my Publications & Papers pages for details of other projects and papers that have been based on this project.