Pedro Alípio, José Neves, Paulo Carvalho
Universidade do Minho
Departamento de Informática
P-4710-057 Braga, Portugal
Tel.: +351 253 604430
Fax.: +351 253 604471
E-mail: {pma,jneves,pmc} (at) di.uminho.pt
Most of the network service management systems rely on informal specifications, hard-coded programming and relational databases to store and manage network services. As a result, such systems may not be correct facing their requirements and they may not be flexible enough to perform network service management efficiently.
This paper presents ongoing work toward an innovative approach, based on knowledge representation, to formally specify the contractual, administrative and technical contents of Service Level Agreements, and the network service management processes and their orchestration promoting network service autonomic management and configuration. By using a knowledge based formal framework and an inference engine capable of reasoning over concepts, relations and changes of state, it is possible to create a more flexible and robust ground for specifying and implementing autonomic and adaptive management tasks.