Communication Specification Validation in Build Pipelines
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Solution Overview
Problem
Detecting and resolving anomalous communication behavior in services within software build pipelines is challenging due to the lack of a known expected communication pattern and the difficulty in simulating production-like environments, especially when external entities vary across development and production environments, making it hard to identify and fix defects early in the lifecycle.
Innovation Solution
A method that extracts an expected communication specification, stimulates the service to exercise communication variations, captures and compares actual communication traffic to this specification, and flags any anomalies, allowing for early detection and resolution of misbehavior within a continuous integration build pipeline without requiring changes to the service's source code.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a service is deployed to an environment that supports interception and capture of all communication to and from the service, then communication behavior can be detected, but the complexity of the system increases and requires additional infrastructure
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a communication specification and interception mechanism as an intermediary layer between the service and external entities. This mediator captures and validates communication traffic without requiring fundamental changes to the service architecture, thereby detecting communication anomalies while managing system complexity through a dedicated validation layer
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates a copy of the communication traffic flow by intercepting and capturing messages between the service and external entities. This copying approach allows validation of communication behavior against specifications without altering the original communication path, enabling detection while maintaining system simplicity
2Measurement precision
If the service is exercised to cause the occurrence of the full spectrum of service communication variations, then detection accuracy improves, but the time and resources required for testing increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent performs preliminary actions by pre-defining communication specifications that describe expected communication patterns before actual service execution. This advance preparation enables rapid validation during service exercise, achieving comprehensive detection accuracy without requiring extensive testing time, as the validation logic is already in place
Solution Approach 2:
The communication specification serves multiple functions: it defines expected behavior, acts as a validation criterion, and provides a reference for anomaly detection. This multi-functionality allows a single specification artifact to enable comprehensive detection of all communication variations without requiring separate testing mechanisms for each scenario
3Reliability
If communication traffic is captured and compared to an expected communication specification, then anomaly detection capability improves, but the effort required to modify the build pipeline increases
Solution Approach 1:
The service itself generates the communication traffic that is captured and validated against its own communication specification. The system performs self-validation where the service's natural communication behavior is intercepted and checked, eliminating the need for external testing infrastructure or complex build pipeline modifications while maintaining strong anomaly detection capability
Data Source
AI summary
One example method includes extracting an expected communication specification of a service that is in development in a build pipeline, stimulating the service to exercise communication variations of the service, capturing communication traffic involving the service and one or more endpoints, comparing the captured communication traffic to the expected communication specification, and based on the comparing, detecting, in the captured communication traffic, and flagging, any anomalous communication behavior of the service.