DICE – Developing Data Intensive Cloud Applications with Iterative Quality Enhancements

DICE is a DevOps platform for Big Data application development created by the DICE consortium through a collaborative effort sponsored by Horizon2020. A high-level overview of the DICE framework is shown in the figure below. This framework includes the following components:

• DICE IDE: an integrated development environment to accelerate coding, design and application prototyping based on the DICE Profile for UML and the DICE Methodology;
• Quality analysis tools: a set of tools for quality analysis during the early-stage of application design via simulation, verification and optimization methods;
• Feedback and Iterative Enhancement tools: a monitoring platform tailored to Big Data technologies and coupled with tools that continuously detect quality anomalies that affect the application design and explain how the data-intensive application utilizes resources to enhance the design;
• Continuous Delivery and Testing tools: a set of tools and methods supporting delivery on private and public clouds via a TOSCA-compliant deployment tool, optimal application configuration, continuous integration, quality testing, and fault injection.

The above architectural components are further broken down in several tools, each one belonging to one of two categories:

• Development tools, which are primarily centered on the development stage of the data-intensive application. The IDE implements the DICE quality-driven methodology that guides the developer through the different stage of refinement of design models up to implementing the initial prototypes of its application. The IDE supports multiple quality analyses offered by the verification, simulation and optimization tools.
• Runtime tools, which collect data during the application quality testing to characterize the efficiency, reliability, and correctness of the components. This data is consolidated in the DICE monitoring platform and used to semi-automatically detect anomalies, optimize the system configuration, and enhance the design.The purpose of the tools within each group of tools is explained in details in the following subsections.

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