Afef Jmal Maâlej
Mohamed Jmaiel
ABSTRACT
Given the scalability of load balancing based architectures, it is increasingly necessary to develop appropriate quality assurance methodologies and techniques, of which Testing is widely adopted and used one. This paper describes a distributed platform for checking the conformance between real functioning of a given load balancer and its specified requirements. Our solution is based on Timed Automata as model for testing supported load balancing algorithms. This paper also shows a novel prototype tool support, LBACT, implemented for quality assurance of load balancing based architectures. Finally, we illustrate our contribution in the context of BPEL clustering mechanisms.
- V. Cardellini, M. Colajanni, and P. S. Yu. Dynamic load balancing on web-server systems. IEEE Internet Computing, 3(3):28–39, May 1999. Google Scholar
Digital Library
- J. Tretmans. Testing concurrent systems: A formal approach. In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Concurrency Theory, volume 1664 of LNCS, pages 46–65. Springer, 1999. Google ScholarDigital Library
- R. Alur and D. L. Dill. A theory of timed automata. Theoretical computer science, 126(2):183–235, 1994. Google ScholarDigital Library
- M. Mikucionis, K. G. Larsen, and B. Nielsen. T-uppaal: Online model-based testing of real-time systems. In Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Automated Software Engineering, pages 396–397, 2004. Google ScholarDigital Library
- W.E. Perry and R.W. Rice. Surviving the top ten challenges of software testing: A People-oriented approach. Dorset House Pub., 1997. Google ScholarDigital Library
- M. A. Franklin and V. Govindan. A general matrix iterative model for dynamic load balancing. Parallel Comput., 22(7):969–989, October 1996. Google ScholarDigital Library
- H. Unger, B. Dane, and J. Nutzel. Experiences simulating the load sharing system lydia with high level pn. In High Performance Computing, Boston, April 1998.Google Scholar
- D. Grosu and A. T. Chronopoulos. A load balancing mechanism with verification. In Proceedings of the 17th IEEE Intl. Parallel and Distributed Processing Symp. Workshop on Advances in Parallel and Distributed Computational Models, pages 163–170, 2003. Google ScholarDigital Library
Index Terms
- Conformance testing for quality assurance of clustering architectures
Recommendations
Conformance testing for real-time systems
We propose a new framework for black-box conformance testing of real-time systems. The framework is based on the model of partially-observable, non-deterministic timed automata. We argue that partial observability and non-determinism are essential ...
Conformance testing of real-time component based systems
ISSADS'05: Proceedings of the 5th international conference on Advanced Distributed SystemsIn this paper, we suggest a methodology for testing Real Time Component Based Systems (RTCBS). A RTCBS is described as a collection of components where each component is modeled as a Timed Input-Output Automaton (TIOA). The first part of this study is ...
Automated Significant Load Testing for WS-BPEL Compositions
ICSTW '13: Proceedings of the 2013 IEEE Sixth International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation WorkshopsWeb service compositions must provide services to hundreds even thousands of users concurrently. These applications must be load tested to ensure that they can function properly under high load. We propose in this paper a solution for load testing of WS-...
Reviews
Massimiliano Masi
The context of this paper is high-performance computing and clustering. In particular, the authors introduce a distributed platform for checking the conformance between the specified requirements and the actual functioning of a given load balancer running in a cluster. The proposed solution is a model-based testing approach, where a formal model automatically generates the test suite and describes the specification. The authors chose timed automata as an abstraction that enables the expression of appropriately functional requirements and timing delays for modeling load-balancing algorithms. They characterize the use of timed automata as a formalism that can be easily manipulated and used to check the functioning of a system while taking timing constraints into account. Although the topic is not new (there are many related works in this area, as the authors correctly note), it is worth the attention. The paper focuses on quality assurance of the load balancer, and the authors achieve their goals using the testing-based technique. The paper's motivating case involves clustering in the context of a business process execution language (BPEL) environment. The authors' tool requires that all of the load-balancing algorithms under test be implemented in their formalism, together with all of the test steps to be performed and checked against the automata. The tool is very interesting, but to help readers appreciate the full extent of the proposed framework, it would have been helpful if the authors had deployed it in a more generic environment and not just in the specific use case. Online Computing Reviews Service
Access critical reviews of Computing literature here
Become a reviewer for Computing Reviews.
Comments