Patent ID: 7509519

Claim:
A method comprising: in response to determining that computer generation of an abstract workflow plan for a network-accessible service resulted in a failure, attempting to automatically recover from the failure without human intervention in a process that includes one of selecting an alternate abstract workflow plan for the network-accessible service being implemented, and providing other information to assist in abstract workflow plan generation; where attempting to automatically recover from the failure of the computer generation of the abstract workflow plan is unsuccessful, applying a plurality of plan selection failure remedy rules, with human intervention, to assist in debugging the failure of the computer generation of the abstract workflow plan; in response to determining that computer assignment of a physical plan for the abstract workflow plan resulted in a failure, attempting to automatically recover from the failure without human intervention in a process that includes one of selection of an alternate physical plan for the abstract workflow plan, and providing other information that can assist in physical plan assignment; where attempting to automatically recover from the failure of the computer assignment of the physical plan for the abstract workflow plan is unsuccessful, applying a plurality of plan assignment failure remedy rules, with human intervention, to assist in debugging the failure of the computer assignment of the physical plan; in response to determining that computer evaluation of a runtime configuration for the physical plan resulted in a failure, attempting to automatically recover from the failure without human intervention in a process that includes one of providing a different or alternate runtime configuration of the physical plan, and providing other information that can assist in runtime evaluation; and, where attempting to automatically recover from the failure of the computer evaluation of the runtime configuration for the physical plan is unsuccessful, applying a plurality of runtime evaluation failure remedy rules, with human intervention, to assist in debugging the failure of the computer evaluation of the runtime configuration.