Self-diagnosis of Applications – Architectural Solution and Ontology

Software package management tools have become common and are available for practically all SDKs. They allow for the definition of dependencies between packages, ensuring consistent use of their respective versions, especially during installation, updating, configuration, and removal. These tools are primarily used in the software development phase by programmers. While the utility of software package managers and the added value they provide to programmers during the development stage are unquestionable, there are still many gaps concerning the remaining phases of the software lifecycle—commonly referred to as the maintenance stage. The need for maintenance arises from the outdatedness of packages, resulting from incompatibilities with other packages, the introduction of improvements and optimizations, the correction of errors, the elimination of vulnerabilities, and so on. Although it is usually possible to identify packages that are deprecated or obsolete, updating is still a manual process initiated by the programmer. In this paper, authors propose a solution, still in its prototype stage, aimed at equipping applications with the means to report their status concerning update needs, particularly for critical updates. The solution consists of a background service that processes technical reports published by various sources, an ontology used to standardize information and concepts from responsibility disclosure reports, a REST service used by applications to obtain a self-diagnosis of their condition and a REST client that is automatically installed in the application.