Administrators and multiprocessor rendezvous mechanisms

This paper discusses rendezvous on multiprocessors. Three different approaches are compared, represented by three specific systems: Ada, Harmony and BNR Pascal. All three permit tasks to run on multiple processors and use blocking communications primitives, but there are significant differences. For example, control over replying to messages out of sequence and over the allocation of tasks to processors is omitted in Ada, but is available in Harmony. The approach represented by BNR Pascal follows a middle road between Harmony and Ada: a low level protocol, invisible to the programmer, is used to ensure communications reliability, but the programmer is aware of when a rendezvous is remote. If performance considerations and verbosity and robustness are ignored, all three approaches are equivalent. To illustrate this equivalence, and to demonstrate clearly the complexity of the Ada rendezvous, an Ada rendezvous administrator written using Harmony is described. A second method of adapting Harmony to Ada is also presented, in which the Harmony primitives are modified to be closer to Ada. In practice, using Harmony primitives directly will usually result in better programs. It is argued that something very much like the rendezvous adminstrator is needed for any actual implementation of the Ada rendezvous.     

Implementing a generic component‐based framework for telecontrol applications

The rapid growth of telecontrol systems is one of the major trends in today's network‐oriented community. The implementation of generic frameworks, consisting of reusable components that can form the basis for the development of such systems, is a necessity. There is a plethora of associated applications that can be developed in a distributed environment, such as audio/video teleconferencing, groupware and collaborative computing environments, remote controlled services, etc. In this paper we design and implement a generic framework of components that can be used for the realization of telecontrol applications. This category of applications focuses primarily on the issues of managing distributed units on remote end‐systems. Such applications contain remote units and administrators that are connected and exchange data and control messages. We analyse the outlined architecture of our framework and the most important system operations. We also describe the communication protocol used in message exchanges between the constituent components. Finally, we illustrate the usefulness of our framework by presenting two applications that were created by extending the basic software infrastructure. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Editorial: Internetware of the Age

While the infrastructure of computing shifting from isolated computers to Internet-linked resources, the software industry transfers its focus from computing products to dependable services. That''s one of the reasons why pervasive computing, grid computing, service computing and cloud computing are introduced on the open and dynamic Internet-linked platform. The communication abilities it introduced enable various resources exchanging and sharing freely, and participating in the community in the social network. There are three layers in such a platform: computing infrastructure, software services and information web. The underline layer, computing infrastructure, provides computing and communication facilities, and the surface layer, information web, is full of information recombination and consuming. The layer of software services serves as a factory to process constantly emerging and heterogeneous dynamic information using distributed, autonomous, and evolvable computing facilities. Therefore, services provided by such software systems should be adaptive, situational, trustworthy, autonomous and etc. To achieve flexible objectives, these services can be coordinated in various styles such as integration, cooperation, orchestration and etc. A portmanteau term \Internetware" is used     

Remote database access in the distributed computing environment

This paper describes the design, implementation and testing of a set of software modules that are used for remote database access in a distributed computing environment. The goal of our research and development is to implement a client server model using Structured Query Language (SQL) functions in the Open Software Foundation's (OSF) distributed computing environment (DCE). This design is compared with another which simply uses the sockets application programming interface (API), running over the transmission control protocol/internet protocol (TCP/IP), and is implemented in subroutines that act similar to the remote procedure call (RPC) generated stub code. The prototypes for the remote SQL access project are implemented using an IBM RISC System/6000 (the client) running the AIX operating system and an IBM AS/400 (the server) running the OS/400 operating system. We selected the AS/400 for its database abilities, and the RISC System/6000 since the DCE software is available for it.     

Towards complexity metrics for Ada tasking

Using Ada as a representative distributed programming language, the author discusses some ideas on complexity metrics that focus on Ada tasking and rendezvous. Concurrently active rendezvous are claimed to be an important aspect of communication complexity. A Petri net graph model of Ada rendezvous is used to introduce a rendezvous graph, an abstraction that can be useful in viewing and computing effective communication complexity     

Resource management policies for real-time Java remote invocations

A way to deal with the increasing cost of next generation real-time applications is to extend middleware and high-level general-purpose programming languages, e.g. Java, with real-time support that reduces development, deployment, and maintenance costs. In the particular path towards a distributed real-time Java technology, some important steps have been given into centralized systems to produce real-time Java virtual machines. However, the integration with traditional remote invocation communication paradigms is far from producing an operative solution that may be used to develop final products. In this context, the paper studies how The Real-Time Specification for Java (RTSJ), the leading effort in real-time Java, may be integrated with Java’s Remote Method Invocation (RMI) in order to support real-time remote invocations. The article details a specific approach towards the problem of producing a predictable mechanism for the remote invocation–the core communication mechanism of RMI–via having control on the policies used in the remote invocation. Results obtained in a software prototype help understand how the key entities defined to control the performance of the remote invocation influence in the end-to-end response time of a distributed real-time Java application.     

A computing framework for integrating interactive visualization in HPCC applications

Network-based concurrent computing and interactive data visualization are two important components in industry applications of high-performance computing and communication. We propose an execution framework to build interactive remote visualization systems for real-world applications on heterogeneous parallel and distributed computers. Using a dataflow model of a commercial visualization software AVS in three case studies, we demonstrate a simple, effective, and modular approach to couple parallel simulation modules into an interactive remote visualization environment. The applications described in this paper are drawn from our industrial projects in financial modeling, computational electromagnetics and computational chemistry. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Accessing embedded systems via WWW: the ProWeb toolset

The ubiquity of Web browsers makes them an ideal generic front end for simple client-server systems. A very suitable area of application is controlling embedded systems, such as network printers, where supporting standard Web browsers is a cost-effective and convenient alternative to developing custom client software for remote administration from different platforms.This paper describes the design and implementation of a flexible communication server to be run directly on the embedded system. It supports different protocols to allow remote access, including HTTP. Thus, the embedded system can be accessed with any Web browser. Its state is represented as a set of Web pages containing dynamically generated information. Java applets included in these Web pages can connect back to the server to subscribe to live data feeds for real-time visualization of the embedded system's state. A GUI builder implemented as a Java applet can be used to customize the visual appearance of these applets.     

Pandora: An Experiment in Distributed Multimedia

An experimental workstation is described which supports digital video and audio in a distributed environment, and which presents this functionality to the user through the medium of a video-extended implementation of the X Window System. The Pandora Workstation is built out of two quite separate parts. A standard UNIX machine (the Pandora Host) brings standard hardware and software computing resources to the system; a highly-specialised processing engine (Pandora's Box) handles the high-bandwidth, time-critical, and device-dependent processing. A 50 Mbit/second ATM network provides for real-time data communication within the system. Nineteen Pandora Workstations have been deployed within Olivetti Research Ltd and the Cambridge University Computer Laboratory, and are used routinely to run distributed applications including video mail, video conferencing, and real-time media delivery services.     

JXTA P2P分布式事件路由改进算法研究

在分布式信息资源网络环境中,信息资源路由转发机制是分布式计算核心功能之一,P2P网络作为分布式计算采用最广泛的应用逻辑覆盖网络.将网络的小世界特性引入到JXTA P2P网络中,对其资源路由算法进行研究,从动态选取聚集节点、自适应选择种子聚集节点、设定对等体组等3方面进行改进.最后,通过模拟实验,表明改进算法的合理性和可行性.改进算法对分布式环境下自适应路由提供了一种可借鉴事件路由策略.     

Object oriented implementation of distributed finite element analysis in .NET

The paper describes a detailed study into the object-oriented implementation of distributed finite element analysis on desktop computers using the .NET framework. The software design aspects are described in some detail for both direct and iterative solution algorithms. The use of interfaces played an important role in the software design. This, together with the .NET framework, enabled remote objects to be implemented in a relatively seamless fashion. The solution routines were “blind” to whether the objects were local or remote. Numerical tests were carried out and reasonable speed-up was achieved, particularly for direct solution methods. It is concluded that .NET provides a viable framework for implementing distributed computing on networks of personal computers.     

大型病患智能远程电子监控系统的设计与实现

现在医疗事业当中,远程医疗作为先进科学技术应用;病患科学治疗监控理念;快速信息化时代体现,正在成为医疗事业当中热门的研究方向。其依靠计算机技术、通讯技术以及信息处理技术为基础,同医疗活动相结合,在当今的医疗事业当中有着广阔的发展前景。本文设计出用于大型病患的智能远程监控系统,系统从生理数据采集、智能终端、IOCP网络通讯器以及数据库和监控软件为设计出发点,利用无线通信网络实现医生或是家属通过监控软件对病患进行实时远程监控和监护。提出系统的设计需求和设计结构,并通过实际检测观察此系统在实际应用中的可靠性以及对各项需求的完成度。结果显示,此系统可以很高程度的完成对与大型病患的远程实时监控和智能化需区。     

An architecture-driven software mobility framework

Software architecture has been shown to provide an appropriate level of granularity for assessing a software system’s quality attributes (e.g., performance and dependability). Similarly, previous research has adopted an architecture-centric approach to reasoning about and managing the run-time adaptation of software systems. For mobile and pervasive software systems, which are known to be innately dynamic and unpredictable, the ability to assess a system’s quality attributes and manage its dynamic run-time behavior is especially important. In the past, researchers have argued that a software architecture-based approach can be instrumental in facilitating mobile computing. In this paper, we present an integrated architecture-driven framework for modeling, analysis, implementation, deployment, and run-time migration of software systems executing on distributed, mobile, heterogeneous computing platforms. In particular, we describe the framework’s support for dealing with the challenges posed by both logical and physical mobility. We also provide an overview of our experience with applying the framework to a family of distributed mobile robotics systems. This experience has verified our envisioned benefits of the approach, and has helped us to identify several avenues of future work.     

MaDViWorld: a software framework for massively distributed virtual worlds

The MaDViWorld project represents an original attempt to define an appropriate software architecture for supporting massively distributed virtual world systems. A non‐massively distributed virtual world system is typically engineered as a client–server application for which a single server or more rarely a small cluster of servers contain all the world pertinent data and assume the world accessibility, consistency and persistence. On the client side, many of them enable interaction with the other users and the various objects of the world. The main originality of our approach resides in the fact that the server part of the proposed system is no more limited to a few centralized servers, but can be distributed on arbitrarily many of them. Indeed, MaDViWorld, the prototypal software framework already implemented using Java and RMI by our group, allows for creating the rooms of a given world on several machines, each running the server application. It is then possible to connect the rooms by way of simple doors and to populate them with active objects. Finally, avatars managed by the client application visit the rooms and interact with the active objects either directly on the remote host or locally by cloning or transporting them first to the client machine. This paper draws from the experience gained with the development of our first prototype in order to discuss, both at the user's and the vi‐world developer's level, the main software engineering issues related to the implementation of such massively distributed virtual world systems. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Performance bounds for concurrent software with rendezvous

Synchronous message-passing communication, or rendezvous, occurring between software tasks can have a significant effect on system performance. The rendezvous style of communication is coming into wider use in programming languages and operating systems for parallel and distributed environments. Understanding the performance implications of this style of inter-task communication is becoming a matter of practical importance. The dual nature of a task which acts both like a customer as well as a server, makes the performance analysis of rendezvous-based multitasking systems quite different from the analysis of the other queueing systems with known results. This research focuses on rendezvous-based systems in which the execution behavior of the software has a nondeterministic component of a very general nature which may for example be the manifestation of a data dependent behavior. Based on a model called the Stochastic Rendezvous Network the computation of bounds on task throughputs for multitasking systems characterized by rendezvous style communication is presented. Although the behavior of tasks is called stochastic, it is very general and the results are valid for general distributions of computation times and the number of messages generated by tasks. The inter-relationship among task throughputs, however, makes it difficult to extract the bounds in closed analytic form. The notion of a feasible throughput region which encloses the set of feasible tasks throughputs and captures the inter-relationship among the behavior of tasks is introduced. Variations of this basic bounding approach that are useful in the context of different types of multitasking systems are considered in the article. For example, a novel technique based on interval arithmetic is proposed for the computation of numerical values for the bounds. The applicability of the bounds and their tightness are analyzed through case studies. Issues such as the inter-relationship between the software architecture and system performance, and the effect of processor contention on the performance bounds are discussed.     

Modules,objects and distributed programming: Issues in RPC and remote object invocation

Distributed programming can be greatly simplified by language support for distributed communication, such as that provided by remote procedure call (RPC) or remote object invocation. This paper examines design and implementation issues in these systems, and focuses on the influence of the communication system on a distributed program. To make the discussion concrete, we introduce a single application as implemented in two environments: Modula-2+, an extension of Modula-2 with RPC, and Emerald, an object-based language that supports remote object invocation. We show that small differences in the implementation of the communication system can have a significant impact on how distributed applications are structured.     

Information Privacy and the MIS Manager

As major vendors ready their distributed computing strategies and products, commercial users are attempting to define their own architectural directions. And, depending on a business's current and future systems and the degree of integration pursued, the road to cooperative, distributed systems may prove lengthy and costly. This column examines the distributed systems strategies of some vendors and the requirements of the business market they are fighting for.     

基于Agent的遥感应用网络硬件监控

在遥感领域多行业遥感信息产品生产系统中,通过分布式计算对遥感数据进行加工处理,需要对各遥感数据的生产处理节点加以监控和管理。针对该问题,提出以监控客户端、监控服务器、监控代理3个独立运行部件为基础的网络硬件监控系统,采用视窗管理规范技术与Log4net技术相结合的方法,以及改善通信方式和增加心跳检测的方法,对系统中各数据加工服务器进行监控。通过对该网络硬件监控系统的实现,证明该方案能够实时有效地获得各生产节点的监控信息,运用图形界面直观地向管理者展示监控结果,并确保各部件之间能够主动发现异常。     

RGraph:基于RDMA的高效分布式图数据处理系统

图是描述实体间关系的重要数据结构,被广泛地应用于信息科学、物理学、生物学、环境生态学等重要的科学领域.现如今,随着图数据规模的不断增大,利用分布式系统来处理大图数据已经成为主流,出现了形如Pregel、GraphX、PowerGraph和Gemini等经典的分布式大图数据处理系统.然而,与当前先进的基于单机的图处理系统...