In grid architecture, a grid workflow system is a type of high-level grid middleware
which aims to support large-scale sophisticated scientific or business processes in a
variety of complex e-science or e-business applications such as climate modelling,
disaster recovery, medical surgery, high energy physics, international stock market
modelling and so on. Such sophisticated processes often contain hundreds of
thousands of computation or data intensive activities and take a long time to
complete. In reality, they are normally time constrained. Correspondingly, temporal
constraints are enforced when they are modelled or redesigned as grid workflow
specifications at build-time. The main types of temporal constraints include upper
bound, lower bound and fixed-time. Then, temporal verification would be conducted
so that we can identify any temporal violations and handle them in time.
Conventional temporal verification research and practice have presented some
basic concepts and approaches. However, they have not paid sufficient attention to
overall temporal verification effectiveness and efficiency. In the context of grid
economy, any resources for executing grid workflows must be paid. Therefore, more
resources should be mainly used for execution of grid workflow itself rather than for
temporal verification. Poor temporal verification effectiveness or efficiency would
cause more resources diverted to temporal verification. Hence, temporal verification
effectiveness and efficiency become a prominent issue and deserve an in-depth
investigation.
This thesis systematically investigates the limitations of conventional temporal
verification in terms of temporal verification effectiveness and efficiency. The
detailed analysis of temporal verification effectiveness and efficiency is conducted
for each step of a temporal verification cycle. There are four steps in total: Step 1 -
defining temporal consistency; Step 2 - assigning temporal constraints; Step 3 -
selecting appropriate checkpoints; and Step 4 - verifying temporal constraints.
Based on the investigation and analysis, we propose some new concepts and develop
a set of innovative methods and algorithms towards more effective and efficient
temporal verification. Comparisons, quantitative evaluations and/or mathematical
proofs are also presented at each step of the temporal verification cycle. These
demonstrate that our new concepts, innovative methods and algorithms can
significantly improve overall temporal verification effectiveness and efficiency.
Specifically, in Step 1, we analyse the limitations of two temporal consistency
states which are defined by conventional verification work. After, we propose four
new states towards better temporal verification effectiveness. In Step 2, we analyse
the necessity of a number of temporal constraints in terms of temporal verification
effectiveness. Then we design a novel algorithm for assigning a series of finegrained
temporal constraints within a few user-set coarse-grained ones. In Step 3, we
discuss the problem of existing representative checkpoint selection strategies in
terms of temporal verification effectiveness and efficiency. The problem is that they
often ignore some necessary checkpoints and/or select some unnecessary ones. To
solve this problem, we develop an innovative strategy and corresponding algorithms
which only select sufficient and necessary checkpoints. In Step 4, we investigate a
phenomenon which is ignored by existing temporal verification work, i.e. temporal
dependency. Temporal dependency means temporal constraints are often dependent
on each other in terms of their verification. We analyse its impact on overall
temporal verification effectiveness and efficiency. Based on this, we develop some
novel temporal verification algorithms which can significantly improve overall
temporal verification effectiveness and efficiency. Finally, we present an extension
to our research about handling temporal verification results since these verification
results are based on our four new temporal consistency states.
The major contributions of this research are that we have provided a set of new
concepts, innovative methods and algorithms for temporal verification in grid
workflow systems. With these, we can significantly improve overall temporal
verification effectiveness and efficiency. This would eventually improve the overall
performance and usability of grid workflow systems because temporal verification
can be viewed as a service or function of grid workflow systems. Consequently, by
deploying the new concepts, innovative methods and algorithms, grid workflow
systems would be able to better support large-scale sophisticated scientific and
business processes in complex e-science and e-business applications in the context
of grid economy.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/216633 |
| Date | January 2007 |
| Creators | Chen, Jinjun, n/a |
| Publisher | Swinburne University of Technology. |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | http://www.swin.edu.au/), Copyright Jinjun Chen |
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