Determining service dependencies in distributed systems

We describe an architecture and its implementation for retrieving and handling dependency information from various managed resources in a Web-based environment. The core of our architecture is a dependency query facility that allows the application of queries and filters to dependency models; its output is a consolidated dependency graph that can then be used as input for event correlators and various management applications to display service topologies or to perform additional problem determination tasks. The definition of an XML-based notation for specifying dependencies facilitates the sharing of information between the various components involved in the process.