science

OASIS TOSCA

OASIS TOSCA is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand OASIS TOSCA rather than just read about it. In short: Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications (TOSCA) is an OASIS standard language originally written to describe a topology of cloud based web services, their components, relationships, and the processes that manage them. The TOSCA standard includes specifications of a file archive format called CSAR.

Key takeaways

OASIS TOSCA belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect OASIS TOSCA to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of OASIS TOSCA from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications (TOSCA) is an OASIS standard language originally written to describe a topology of cloud based web services, their components, relationships, and the processes that manage them. The TOSCA standard includes specifications of a file archive format called CSAR. Version 2.0 extended the field of application to cover a wider range of scenarios comprising nodes and the relationships between them.

History On 16 January 2014, OASIS TOSCA Technical Committee approved TOSCA 1.0 as a standard. Version 1.3 was approved on 26 February 2020 and version 2.0 was published as a full OASIS standard on 9 September 2025.

Specification The specification is fully described in the standard and has been cited in academic papers such as The standard is maintained by the OASIS Technical Committee in a github repository and there is a companion repository for community contributions.

Related specifications Commercialization of cloud computing offerings has required manageability of tenant applications, particularly on a large scale. As such, vendors who offer their services to a wide market have written related standards that predate, or have been developed concurrently, with the OASIS TOSCA standard.

Amazon AWS CloudFormation template The AWS CloudFormation template is a JSON data standard to allow cloud application administrators to define a collection of related AWS resources. CloudFormation is a proprietary format from AWS, that is not TOSCA based, and therefore does not bring the promise OASIS TOSCA is targeting. Check this grammar compared to the OASIS TOSCA one .

OpenStack Heat The OpenStack Foundation has also defined a similar standard for specifying resources and the orchestrations for managing infrastructure, and application lifecycles. The heat-translator project was one of the first to adopt TOSCA for standardized templating.

Related projects

Cloudify Cloudify allows organizations an effortless transition to public cloud and Cloud-Native architecture by enabling them to automate their existing infrastructure alongside cloud native and distributed edge resources. Cloudify also allows users to manage different orchestration and automation domains as part of one common CI/CD pipeline. Cloudify is an open source, multi-cloud orchestration platform featuring unique technology that packages infrastructure, networking, and existing automation tools into certified blueprints. It is an open-source cloud orchestration framework. which enables you to model applications and services and automate their entire life cycle.

Alien4Cloud Application LIfecycle ENabler for Cloud (Alien4Cloud) is an open-source TOSCA based designer and cloud application lifecycle management platform. It is integrated with Yorc for runtime orchestration though other orchestrators can be plugged to it.

Opera (xOpera orchestrator) The xOpera project provides a set of tools for orchestration and automation of the cloud applications. The xOpera includes Opera orchestrator (Python library), a lightweight, open-source and state-aware orchestrator based on Ansible and TOSCA Simple Profile in YAML v1.3. The project also includes a tool, called Template Library Publishing Service, for publishing TOSCA components and templates. In 2021 xOpera project was presented on the TOSCA TC implementation stories webinar.

Yorc Ystia Orchestrator (Yorc) is an open-source TOSCA orchestration engine. It aims to support the whole application lifecycle, from deployment, scaling, monitoring, self-healing, self-scaling to application upgrade, over hybrid infrastructures (IaaS, HPC schedulers, CaaS).

Ubicity Ubicity provides tooling and orchestrators based on TOSCA.

MiCADOscale MiCADOscale is an open-source TOSCA-based cloud resource orchestration framework for applications using Docker.

Infrastructure Manager Infrastructure Manager (IM) is an open-source TOSCA-based orchestration framework based on YAML.

Related research projects

CloudCycle CloudCycle was funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy and ran from November 2011 to October 2014. It covered an open source TOSCA modeler and an open source TOSCA interpreter

SeaClouds SeaClouds is an EU FP7 funded project whose mission is to provide adaptive multi-cloud management of service-based applications. It natively supports TOSCA, and it is participating in the standardization of such standard.

DICE DICE is an EU H2020 funded project offering a model-driven DevOps toolchain to develop big data applications. TOSCA acts as the pivot language between modelling notations and the deployment, monitoring, etc., by offering standard infrastructure-as-code that can be generated automatically from models.

COLA Cloud Orchestration at the Level of Application (COLA) is an EU H2020 funded project to develop a generic pluggable framework that supports the optimal and secure deployment and run-time orchestration of cloud applications. The developed framework (MiCADOscale) is a cloud-agnostic solution that allows existing applications to be scaled dynamically in real-time based on the current demand. The definition of the application is done in a TOSCA-based application description.

RADON RADON is an EU H2020 project focusing on providing the DevOps framework for creating and managing microservices-based applications. The project uses TOSCA with Ansible for defining IaC blueprints that can be graphically edited with Eclipse Winery. The application lifecycle management was managed with the xOpera SaaS.

See also Web Services Conversation Language WS-CDL Workflow XML Process Definition Language Yet Another Workflow Language

References

External links Standards Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications Version 1.0 Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications Version 1.3 Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications Version 2.0

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with OASIS TOSCA

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what OASIS TOSCA claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to OASIS TOSCA before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about OASIS TOSCA ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of OASIS TOSCA

In research: OASIS TOSCA appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses OASIS TOSCA in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: OASIS TOSCA is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Specification languages, Web service specifications, Workflow languages, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for OASIS TOSCA outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study OASIS TOSCA in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what OASIS TOSCA means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain OASIS TOSCA out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is OASIS TOSCA in simple terms?

Why does OASIS TOSCA matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study OASIS TOSCA?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on OASIS TOSCA.