The cloud-computing paradigm has given rise to cloud-based service provision on the management of data, i.e. data services. The latter refers to transparent management of customer data, performed by the cloud provider in a time- and cost-efficient manner. This includes effective allocation of cloud resources, data organization for high availability and robustness, optimized scaling of data processing as well as multi-tenancy of data management applications.

A major obstacle in putting data services into business practice is the lack of techniques and methods for defining, establishing and monitoring application-specific Service Level Agreements (SLAs), especially of fine granularity. Many issues are still not solved or not even tackled in business or research. These are related to the determination and exposition through SLAs of objectives, constraints and properties of data services that can be offered by providers or requested by customers.

Service Level Agreements represent contractual terms and conditions between service providers and customers. Every customer needs to agree with a SLA in order to lease a new service. SLAs describe provisioning terms and encapsulate QoS characteristics as well as functional properties. Traditionally, providers define SLAs, where they guarantee explicit provisioning service level bounds for an agreed period.

In the scientific literature, SLAs are hardly viewed as end-user documents, but merely as automated processes that assist the monitoring and scheduling of resources. In contrast, cloud IT marketplaces treat SLAs as static documents that do not allow for any processing. Moreover, strong diversity exists in how service providers from distinct business and socio-economical domains formulate and exercise their provisioning responsibilities. Such issues need to be resolved in order to employ SLAs in data service provision.

Workshop goal is to create a fruitful discussion on how to adopt and adapt the common practice of SLA establishment and management for the provision of data services. The workshop aspires to bring together data management experts and SLA management experts in order to exchange their experience on the particularities, capabilities and constraints of their domain and define and propose necessary extensions of SLA practice for data services. The workshop aspires to publish novel theoretical and practical ideas on the exhibition and management of data service objectives, constraints and properties through SLAs for the benefit of both providers and customers.

Workshop topics include but are not limited to:

SLA monitoring and auditing for data-intensive applications
Life-cycle management
Penalties/rewards systems
Reputation mechanisms
SLAs for data-as-a-service and database-as-a-service
Provisioning planning design
SLA formalization and standardization of SLA data models
Data service vocabularies
SLA storage and volatility
Heterogeneity of SLA terms
SLA provisioning for cloud data management
Multi-tenancy
Vendor lock-in
Application migration
Customer provisioning requirements for data services
SLA customization
Data service profiling