A quality of service (QOS) framework for mediating needs of software
applications in the context of an application framework with capabilities
of a network host platform in response to a service request from the
software application. The QOS framework includes a QOS knowledge base and
rules module including a specialized set of system wide rules for
dynamically changing QOS behavior in response to the service request. The
QOS framework also includes QOS framework service modules for negotiating
between the software application and the network host platform based on
the specialized set of system wide rules included in the QOS knowledge
base and rules module. In addition, the QOS framework includes a
plurality of QOS application platform interfaces (APIs) for
interconnecting the QOS framework service modules with the QOS knowledge
base and rules module, and a plurality of APIs for connecting the
application with the QOS framework service modules and with the network
host platform.