Optimized QoS-aware replica placement heuristics and applications in astronomy data grid

This paper studies the Quality-of-Service (QoS)-aware replica placement problem in a general graph model. Since the problem was proved NP-hard, heuristic algorithms are the current solutions to the problem. However, these algorithms cannot always find the effective replica placement strategy. We propose two algorithms that can obtain better results within the given time period. The first algorithm is called Cover Distance algorithm, which is based on the Greedy Cover algorithm. The second algorithm is an optimized genetic algorithm, in which we use random heuristic algorithms to generate initial population to avoid enormous useless searching. Then, the 0-Greedy-Delete algorithm is used to optimize the genetic algorithm solutions. According to the performance evaluation, our Cover Distance algorithm can obtain relatively better solution in time critical scenarios. Whereas, the optimized genetic algorithm is better when the replica cost is of higher priority than algorithm execution time. The QoS-aware data replication heuristic algorithms are applied into the data distribution service of an astronomy data grid pipeline prototype, and the operation process is studied in detail.     

Service Sharing for Streaming Video Multicast

In a general context, the sharing of intermediate service results among different processes is seldom feasible because parameters are often different and there may be transactional and side effects. However, in a streaming video multicast environment, a large number of users often request various similar processing on the same stream. Therefore, service sharing is feasible, with a large potential of savings in processing cost. In this paper, we study the problem of determining the service invocation orders for multiple service composition requests in a streaming video multicast with the aim of maximizing the service sharing. We first formally define the problem. After proving the problem is NP-Complete, we develop an optimal algorithm for the base case of two requests. Then for the general case, we develop two heuristic algorithms, namely, a global greedy algorithm and a local greedy algorithm using the optimal algorithm for the base case as the building block. The global greedy algorithm is designed for a system where the existing service composition requests can be recomposed with the arrival of a new request. The local greedy algorithm can be used in a system where the existing service composition requests do not change their service composition solutions with the arrival of a new request. We prove that the global greedy algorithm is a 2-approximation algorithm in terms of maximizing service sharing. Simulation results show that the greedy algorithms can save more service costs compared with a naive algorithm, and are effective compared with the cost lower bound.      

Analysis of a Heuristic for Code Partitioning

In this paper, we analyze the time complexity and performance of a heuristic for code partitioning for Distributed Memory Multiprocessors (DMMs). The partitioning method is data-flow based where all levels of parallelism are exploited. Given a weighted Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) representation of the program, our algorithm automatically determines the granularity of parallelism by partitioning the graph into tasks to be scheduled on the DMM. The granularity of parallelism depends only on the program to be executed and on the target machine parameters. The output of our algorithm is passed on as input to the scheduling phase. Finding an optimal solution to this problem is NP-complete. Due to the high cost of graph algorithms, it is nearly impossible to come up with close to optimal solutions that do not have very high cost (higher order polynomial). Our proposed heuristic gives good performance and has relatively low cost.     

Variable neighborhood search for the Vertex Separation Problem

The Vertex Separation Problem belongs to a family of optimization problems in which the objective is to find the best separator of vertices or edges in a generic graph. This optimization problem is strongly related to other well-known graph problems; such as the Path-Width, the Node Search Number or the Interval Thickness, among others. All of these optimization problems are NP-hard and have practical applications in VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration), computer language compiler design or graph drawing. Up to know, they have been generally tackled with exact approaches, presenting polynomial-time algorithms to obtain the optimal solution for specific types of graphs. However, in spite of their practical applications, these problems have been ignored from a heuristic perspective, as far as we know. In this paper we propose a pure 0-1 optimization model and a metaheuristic algorithm based on the variable neighborhood search methodology for the Vertex Separation Problem on general graphs. Computational results show that small instances can be optimally solved with this optimization model and the proposed metaheuristic is able to find high-quality solutions with a moderate computing time for large-scale instances.     

QoS-aware replica placement for content distribution

The rapid growth of new information services and business-oriented applications entails the consideration of quality of service (QoS) in content distribution. This paper investigates the QoS-aware replica placement problems for responsiveness QoS requirements. We consider two classes of service models: replica-aware services and replica-blind services. In replica-aware services, the servers are aware of the locations of replicas and can therefore optimize request routing to improve responsiveness. We show that the QoS-aware placement problem for replica-aware services is NP-complete. Several heuristic algorithms for fast computation of good solutions are proposed and experimentally evaluated. In replica-blind services, the servers are not aware of the locations of replicas or even their existence. As a result, each replica only serves the requests flowing through it under some given routing strategy. We show that there exist polynomial optimal solutions to the QoS-aware placement problem for replica-blind services. Efficient algorithms are proposed to compute the optimal locations of replicas under different cost models.     

A graph theoretical approach to determine a join reducer sequencein distributed query processing

Semijoin has traditionally been relied upon to reduce the cost of data transmission for distributed query processing. However, judiciously applying join operations as reducers can lead to further reduction in the amount of data transmission required. In view of this fact, we explore the approach of using join operations as reducers in distributed query processing. We first show that the problem of determining a sequence of join operations for a query can be transformed to that of finding a specific type of set of cuts to the corresponding query graph, where a cut to a graph is a partition of nodes in that graph. Then, in light of this concept, we prove that the problem of determining the optimal sequence of join operations for a given query graph is of exponential complexity, thus justifying the necessity of applying heuristic approaches to solve this problem. By mapping the problem of determining a sequence of join reducers into the one of finding a set of cuts, we develop (for tree and general query graphs, respectively) efficient heuristic algorithms to determine a join reducer sequence for distributed query processing. The algorithms developed are based on the concept of divide and conquer and are of polynomial time complexity. Simulation is performed to evaluate these algorithms     

Multitask-oriented manufacturing service composition in an uncertain environment using a hyper-heuristic algorithm

One of the most important issues in cloud manufacturing involves obtaining an optimal manufacturing service composition solution. However, traditional manufacturing service composition methods either focused on single-task-oriented service composition or optimized solutions under a deterministic environment. In the study, a multitask-oriented manufacturing service composition (MMSC) model with two stages in uncertain environment is proposed. It handles the problem of multitask scheduling and also deals with the inherent uncertainty and ambiguity in cloud manufacturing including the occurrence of urgent task requests and the delayed delivery time of raw materials. In order to solve the MMSC model, a new genetic based hyper-heuristic algorithm (GA-HH) with adjustable length of chromosome is proposed. The GA-HH contains a set of low-level heuristics that directly operate on the solution domain that are organized by the high-level heuristic (i.e., genetic algorithm). Finally, the proposed GA-HH is proved as an efficient, effective, and robust algorithm to solve the MMSC model with considerations of multitask and uncertainty, by comparing it with other well-known meta-heuristic algorithms such as the genetic algorithm and particle swarm optimization.     

Heuristic methods for delay constrained least cost routing using /spl kappa/-shortest-paths

The delay constrained least cost (DCLC) problem is to find the least cost path in a graph subject to a delay constraint. First formulated in the context of routing in computer networks, the DCLC model also applies to problems of path planning and other decision problems. DCLC is NP-complete. Many heuristic methods have been proposed for it. This note presents two new methods based on the /spl kappa/-shortest-path (/spl kappa/SP) approach. These heuristic methods-one centralized, the other distributed-are both polynomial. In numerical experiments the proposed algorithms almost always find the optimal paths.     

Service composition for generic service graphs

Service composition is a promising approach to multimedia service provisioning, due to its ability to dynamically produce new multimedia content, and to customize the content for individual client devices. Previous research work has addressed various aspects of service composition such as composibility, QoS-awareness, and load balancing. However, most of the work has focused on applications where data flow from a single source is processed by intermediate services and then delivered to a single destination. In this paper, we address the service composition problem for multimedia services that can be modeled as directed acyclic graphs (DAGs). We formally define the problem and prove its NP hardness. We also design a heuristic algorithm to solve the problem. Our simulation results show that the algorithm is effective at finding low-cost composition solutions, and can trade off computation overhead for better results. When compared with a hop-by-hop approach for service composition, our algorithm can find composition solutions that aress 10% smaller in cost, even when the hop-by-hop approach uses exhaustive searches.     

Optimal selection of secondary indexes

When planning a database, the problem of index selection is of particular interest. The authors examine a transaction model that includes queries, updates, insertions, and deletions, and they define a function that calculates the transaction's total cost when an index set is used. Their aim is to minimize the function cost in order to identify the optimal set. The algorithms proposed in other studies require an exponential time in the number of attributes in order to solve the problem. The authors propose a heuristic algorithm based on some properties of the cost function that produces an almost optimal set in polynomial time. In many cases, the cost function properties make it possible to prove that the solution obtained is the optimal one     

Minimizing makespan subject to minimum flowtime on two identical parallel machines

We consider the problem of scheduling jobs on two parallel identical machines where an optimal schedule is defined as one that gives the smallest makespan (the completion time of the last job) among the set of schedules with optimal total flowtime (the sum of the completion times of all jobs). We propose an algorithm to determine optimal schedules for the problem, and describe a modified multifit algorithm to find an approximate solution to the problem in polynomial computational time. Results of a computational study to compare the performance of the proposed algorithms with a known heuristic shows that the proposed heuristic and optimization algorithms are quite effective and efficient in solving the problem.Scope and purposeMultiple objective optimization problems are quite common in practice. However, while solving scheduling problems, optimization algorithms often consider only a single objective function. Consideration of multiple objectives makes even the simplest multi-machine scheduling problems NP-hard. Therefore, enumerative optimization techniques and heuristic solution procedures are required to solve multi-objective scheduling problems. This paper illustrates the development of an optimization algorithm and polynomially bounded heuristic solution procedures for the scheduling jobs on two identical parallel machines to hierarchically minimize the makespan subject to the optimality of the total flowtime.     

Graphical models and point pattern matching

This paper describes a novel solution to the rigid point pattern matching problem in Euclidean spaces of any dimension. Although we assume rigid motion, jitter is allowed. We present a noniterative, polynomial time algorithm that is guaranteed to find an optimal solution for the noiseless case. First, we model point pattern matching as a weighted graph matching problem, where weights correspond to Euclidean distances between nodes. We then formulate graph matching as a problem of finding a maximum probability configuration in a graphical model. By using graph rigidity arguments, we prove that a sparse graphical model yields equivalent results to the fully connected model in the noiseless case. This allows us to obtain an algorithm that runs in polynomial time and is provably optimal for exact matching between noiseless point sets. For inexact matching, we can still apply the same algorithm to find approximately optimal solutions. Experimental results obtained by our approach show improvements in accuracy over current methods, particularly when matching patterns of different sizes.     

一种高效的服务组合优化算法

随着功能性属性相同而非功能性属性各异的Web服务的大量涌现,如何在服务组合业务流程中为各个任务选择相应的组件服务以达到组合服务的QoS(quality of service)最大化,并在此基础上满足不同用户的需求,已成为了国内外研究的热点.由于该问题的复杂性(NP-hard),目前存在的大多数方法都并不十分适合需要相对精确、实时决策的Web服务组合系统.因此,本文提出了一种基于凸包构建的组合服务优化算法(CM-HEU)用以解决QoS感知的服务组合优化问题.CM-HEU首先通过对组合服务中的每组任务进行凸包构建,以减少搜索空间.然后通过对初始解向量的多次升级和一次降级操作以达到全局优化的目标.实验表明:相对于现阶段存在的一些主流方法,CM-HEU不仅能得到一个比较理想的结果,并且具有良好的效率.     

Energy efficient transmission scheduling for infrastructure sensor nodes in location systems

This paper considers a location system where a number of deployed sensor nodes collaborate with objects that need to be localized. Unlike existing works, we focus on reducing the energy consumption of the sensor nodes, which are assumed to be static and run on limited battery power. To minimize the total wake-up time of the sensor nodes, we control the transmission schedule of each object. Because it is difficult to find an optimal solution to the considered optimization problem, we consider an approach to this problem that consists of two steps: (1) create an equivalent modified graph coloring subproblem, and (2) permute the coloring result to obtain a best possible solution. We adopt some existing graph coloring algorithms for step 1 and find two properties of optimal schedules that can be used to confine the search space for step 2. Additionally, we propose a heuristic algorithm that aims at significantly reducing the complexity for the case where the confined search space is still too large. The performance of our heuristic algorithm is evaluated through extensive simulations. It is shown that its performance is comparable to that of the simulated annealing algorithm, which gives a near-optimal solution.     

基于社团服务链的Web服务组合方法

针对Web服务组合的时间效率提高问题,提出了一种基于服务社团和服务链的Web服务组合方法。在构造的服务网络上应用基于信息中心度的服务社团发现方法,将Web服务网络划分为不同的服务社团,然后构造了社团服务链发现算法和基于服务链的Web服务组合算法,这些算法将服务社团内Web服务之间的所有可组合关联转变成服务链,实现了基于社团服务链和服务质量(QoS)剪枝的Web服务组合过程。实验结果表明,与传统的图深度遍历Web服务组合方法相比,基于社团服务链的Web服务组合方法在5个测试集上的响应时间平均提高了46%,最好情况为67%。社团服务链可以有效地减少针对当前服务请求的服务搜索空间,提高服务组合的时间效率。     

基于深度优先的分步分治算法研究

Top-k服务组合问题对于学术界和工业界来讲,都有实际的研究意义和应用场景。文中分析了理解top-k问题的关键所在解图,提出了基于深度优先的分步分治算法进行服务组合。该算法对用户请求的输出参数分别进行求解,该过程可并行处理,在求解结束后再进行合并。该方法可以支持分布式、并行处理框架,从而在应对大规模的服务集合时,能快速、高效地提供满足用户需求的组合服务;提出了通过构造解图的方法进行搜索求解,通过求解＂关键路径＂和＂非关键路径＂与合并＂关键路径＂和＂非关键路径＂得到解图。     

Optimal precomputation for mapping service level agreements in grid computing

A complicated task running on the grid system is usually made up of many services, each of which typically offers a better service quality at a higher cost. Mapping service level agreements (SLAs) optimally is to find the most appropriate quality level for each service such that the overall SLA of a task is achieved at the minimum cost. This paper considers mapping the execution time SLA in the case of the discrete cost function, which is an NP-hard problem. Due to the high computation of mapping SLAs, we propose a precomputation scheme that makes the selection of each individual service level in advance for every possible SLA requirement, which can reduce the request response time greatly. We use a (1+ε)-approximation method, whose solution for any time bound is at most (1+ε) times of the optimal cost. Simulation results demonstrate the superiority of our method compared with others.     

Two-machine no-wait flowshop scheduling with learning effect and convex resource-dependent processing times

Two-machine no-wait flowshop scheduling problems in which the processing time of a job is a function of its position in the sequence and its resource allocation are considered in the study. The primary objective is to find the optimal sequence of jobs and the optimal resource allocation separately. Here we propose two separate models: minimizing a cost function of makespan, total completion time, total absolute differences in completion times and total resource cost; minimizing a cost function of makespan, total waiting time, total absolute differences in waiting times and total resource cost. Since each model is strongly NP-hard, we solve both models by breaking them down to two sub-problems, the optimal resource allocation problem for any job sequence and the optimal sequence problem with its optimal resource allocation. Specially, we transform the second sub-problem into the minimum of the bipartite graph optimal matching problem (NP-hard), and solve it by using the classic KM (Kuhn–Munkres) algorithm. The solutions of the two sub-problems demonstrate that the target problems remain polynomial solvable under the proposed model.     

Comparison of selected algorithms for scheduling workflow applications with dynamically changing service availability

This paper compares the quality and execution times of several algorithms for scheduling service based workflow applications with changeable service availability and parameters. A workflow is defined as an acyclic directed graph with nodes corresponding to tasks and edges to dependencies between tasks. For each task, one out of several available services needs to be chosen and scheduled to minimize the workflow execution time and keep the cost of service within the budget. During the execution ofa workflow, some services may become unavailable, new ones may appear, and costs and execution times may change with a certain probability. Rescheduling is needed to obtain a better schedule. A solution is proposed on how integer linear pro- gramming can be used to solve this problem to obtain optimal solutions for smaller problems or suboptimal solutions for larger ones. It is compared side-by-side with GAIN, divide-and-conquer, and genetic algorithms for various probabilities of service unavailability or change in service parameters. The algorithms are implemented and subsequently tested in a real BeesyCluster environment.     

Rollout strategies for sequential fault diagnosis

Test sequencing is a binary identification problem wherein one needs to develop a minimal expected cost testing procedure to determine which one of a finite number of possible failure sources, if any, is present. The problem can be solved optimally using dynamic programming or AND/OR graph search methods (AO/sup */, CF, and HS). However, for large systems, the associated computation with dynamic programming or AND/OR graph search methods is substantial, due to the rapidly increasing number of OR nodes (denoting ambiguity states) and AND nodes (denoting tests) in the search graph. In order to overcome the computational explosion, the one-step or multistep lookahead heuristic algorithms have been developed to solve the test sequencing problem. In this paper, we propose to apply rollout strategies, which can be combined with the one-step or multistep lookahead heuristic algorithms, in a computationally more efficient manner than the optimal strategies, to obtain solutions superior to those using the one-step or multistep lookahead heuristic algorithms. The rollout strategies are illustrated and tested using a range of real-world systems. We show computational results, which suggest that the information-heuristic based rollout policies are significantly better than other rollout policies based on Huffman coding and entropy.