Abstract—Cloud computing, an emerging computing paradigm, is still in its stage of infancy. It can be considered as an amalgam of a variety of legacy and evolving technologies and concepts such as distributed computing, grid computing, virtualization, service-oriented architecture, software-as-aservice etc to mention a few. It aims at optimally utilizing the distributed, dynamically-scalable and often virtualized resources such as processors, storage and software, which are made available to the users as services over a network, on a pay-per-use basis. These services can be easily accessed by the user through an interface, as simple as a browser. But as the technologies are in a state of flux, developing the software services in the cloud directly using existing technologies will make them obsolete as and when new technologies evolve. Model-driven Architecture (MDA), an initiative by Object Management Group (OMG), is an open, vendor-neutral approach that supports the complete software development process with the modeling activity. In this paper, the authors propose to leverage Model-Driven Architecture to specify the software services in the cloud using platform-independent model (PIM), from which one or more platform-specific models (PSM) can be derived using automated transformation tools. The software services thus yielded will be more robust, flexible and agile in the wake of changing technologies.
Index Terms—Cloud computing, cloud SAAS, model-driven architecture (MDA), platform independent model (PIM), platform specific model (PSM).
R. Sharma is a Research Scholar at the Department of Computer Science, Himachal Pradesh University, Summer Hill, Shimla, India (e-mail: rituchetan@gmail.com)
M. Sood is an Associate Professor at the Department of Computer Science, Himachal Pradesh University, Summer Hill, Shimla, Himachal Pradesh, India (e-mail: soodm_67@yahoo.com)
Cite: Ritu Sharma and Manu Sood, "Modeling Cloud Software-As-A-Service: A Perspective," International Journal of Information and Electronics Engineering vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 238-242, 2012.