What SOA can do for Software Dependability

The prosperity and competitiveness of organizations and societies in general largely depend on the degree of their ability to react flexibly and pro-actively on a constantly changing environment. As many new products and services depend on information and communication software, the inertness of today’s software systems turns them into an obstacle rather than an enabler and results in dependability degradation during the systems’ lifetime. Even more so, heterogeneity, scale, and dynamics open up what Laprie called the “dependability gap”. In this position paper, we identify two research directions to close the dependability gap: First, to improve the integration of software systems with the business functions they support. Second, adaptive and evolvable systems based on the control loop approach. For both research directions, we will show how and to what extent SOA provides support today—and what is needed to foster the true potential of SOA for dependable and agile software systems tomorrow.