PuzzleMesh: A puzzle model to build mesh of agnostic services for edge-fog-cloud

This paper presents the design, development, and evaluation of PuzzleMesh, an agnostic service mesh composition model to process large volumes of data in edge-fog-cloud environments. This model is based on a puzzle metaphor where pieces, puzzles, and metapuzzles represent self-contained autonomous and reusable software artifacts encapsulated into containers and published as microservices. A piece represents the integration of apps with I/O interfaces (loops/sockets), parallel processing, and management software. A puzzle represents a processing structure (e.g., workflows) built coupling pieces through loops and sockets. Puzzles integrate structures with a microservice architecture, implicit continuous dataflows, and transparent data exchange management software. A metapuzzle represents a recursive assemble of puzzles. A mesh represents a pool of pieces, puzzles, and metapuzzles available for designers to choose artifacts to build services. A prototype developed using PuzzleMesh model was evaluated through case studies about the automatic construction of processing services for the acquisition, pre-processing, manufacturing, preserving, and visualizing of satellite imagery. A qualitative comparison revealed that PuzzleMesh provides a flexible way to build reusable and portable services and to improve the usability of the services. The case study also revealed that PuzzleMesh yielded better performance results than other state-of-the-art tools.