Service Oriented Architecture for Adaptive Evolutionary Algorithms: Implementation and Applications

The objective of this thesis is to prove that the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) paradigm can be used to create distributed, heterogeneous, dynamic and standards-based environments for Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs). SOA provides independence in programming language and transmission mechanisms, and also facilitates dynamic component management.

A methodology to develop EAs in these environments is proposed. In this methodology, called SOA-EA, the SOA paradigm is proposed to develop Service Oriented Evolutionary Algorithms (SOEAs). The proposed methodology takes into account the requirement to develop services and EAs, and it provides the steps to identify, specify, implement and deploy the elements that conform a SOEA, and how to convert a traditional EA into a SOEA. To validate this methodology, it has been used to create a framework for SOEAs, called OSGiLiath, based in a public specification technology (OSGi). This framework provides mechanisms for dynamic component management and language and transmission independence.

OSGiLiath and SOA-EA have been used to carry out experiments in different areas to validate dynamic control and different and heterogeneous environments: decentralized distributed EAs, other systems integration and different EA models.