Visualizing Distributed Systems of Dynamically Cooperating Services
Systementwicklungsprojekt (SEP)
Bearbeiter:
Daniel Pustka
Aufgabensteller:
Prof. Bernd Brügge?
Betreuer:
Asa MacWilliams
Overview
The purpose of this SEP was the design and the implementation of the graphical monitoring tool for DWARF systems,
DIVE (DWARF Interactive Visualization Environment).
Problem Statement
Finding out what services are running on the various computers and how the DWARF middleware has connected them is a tedious task. For that purpose, a developer usually would open terminal windows that contain the diagnostic output of all participating software components (the service manager on the need’s side and the two services). As the output most of the time also contains other data, finding the right infor-mation there is difficult.
Visualization of DWARF systems as a graph
The purpose of this SEP is to develop a visualization tool for DWARF systems. The software must take account of the distributed aspect of DWARF systems by collecting information about the services from the different service managers. This information is then used to draw a two-dimensional diagram showing the currently active services and the connections between them. Caring about the dynamic aspect of the system, this diagram should always be kept up-to-date to reflect the changes in the system.
Viewing service attributes
A diagram can only contain limited information about the services themselves. Therefore, by clicking on a component in the diagram, a developer should be able to get additional information about it, such as ser-vice attributes, state of the service, name of the host computer, communication protocols, etc.
Event monitoring
Another problem comes up when the system is not working as expected. If the reason is not immediately clear, the communication between the services should be among the first things that are checked. To help in the debugging process, the visualization tool should provide means to monitor the communication be-tween services. The first version only includes support for CORBA structured events, but the application should be extensible to other forms of communication.
A screenshot of DIVE in action
Links
Documents
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DanielPustka - 19 Nov 2003
-- Main.Main.AsaMacWilliams - 18 Nov 2003
