Smart Collective Services in the Edge–Cloud Continuum Based on a Simulation-Driven Toolchain

Deployment-level concerns strongly impact on the system performance and, hence, often influence the design and implementation phases, slowing down the entire development process. This is particularly true in the Edge–Cloud Continuum (ECC) where the heterogeneity of actors, resource availability, and requirement is intrinsically high with respect to conventional computing systems. Therefore, to substantiate the design principles and the abstractions promoted by Fluidware and aimed at promoting openness and flexibility regarding the target infrastructure, in this chapter, we present a methodology and a toolchain that allow to specify the system behavior without considering deployment details. In detail, the methodology specifies how Fluidware funnels can be decomposed through the pulverization approach, while the toolchain supports the formal description and exercise of deployments in a controlled environment.