Process Coordination in Service and Computational Grids


Professor Dan C. Marinescu
Computer Science Department
School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
University of Central Florida

Email: dcm@cs.ucf.edu

Office: CS 262

                  Office Hours:  Mo and  Wd  5:30-6:30 PM.



I.  Rationale

The infrastructure consisting of the Internet, the computer systems connected to it, and the services offered by autonomous service providers in this semantic Web are often called computational, data, and service grids. This course is devoted to coordination services on a grid.


II.  Textbook

Required: Dan C. Marinescu Internet-Based Workflow Management: Towards a Semantic Web . Wiley, 2002.

Recommended: Recent papers from journals and conference proceedings.                                  

III.  Outline


I.    Introduction to Internet-Based Workflows  (1.5 weeks)

a.    Enabling Technologies
b.    Nomadic, Network-Centric, and Network-Aware Computing
c.    Information Grids; the Semantic Web
d.    Informal Introduction to Workflows
e.    The Workflow Reference Model
f.    Workflows and Data Base Management Systems
g.    Internet Workflow Models
h.    Transactional Versus Internet-based Workflows
i.    Workflow Enactment
j.    Challenges of Dynamic Workflows

II.    Petri Nets (2 weeks)
 
III.    Basic Concepts and Models  (3.5 weeks)

a.    Information Transmission and Communication Channel Models
b.    Process Models
c.    Synchronous and Asynchronous Message Passing Systems
d.    Monitoring Models
e.    Reliability and Fault Tolerance Models. Reliable Collective Communication.
f.    Resource Sharing, Scheduling, and Performance Models
g.    Security Models
h.    Challenges in Distributed Systems
i.    Concurrency
ii.    Mobility of Data and Computations


IV.    Internet Quality of Service (4 weeks)

a.    Introduction to Networking
b.    Service Guarantees and Service Models
c.    Flows
d.    Best Effort service Networks
e.    Maximum and Minimum Bandwidth Guarantees
f.    Delay Guarantees and Packet Scheduling Strategies
g.    Integrated and Differentiated Services

V.    Open Systems and Information Grids (2 weeks)

a.    Resource Management, Discovery and Virtualization in an Open System
b.    Physical and Virtual Mobility
c.    Service Coordination in Service Grids
d.    Computational Grids and Metacomputing

VI.    Process Coordination and Software Agents  (2 weeks)

a.    Coordination and Autonomy
b.    Coordination Models
c.    Coordination Techniques

i.    Coordination based upon Scripting Languages
ii.    Coordination based Shared Data Spaces
iii.    Coordination based upon Middle Agents
d.    Software Agents
e.    Agent Communication


IV. Grading

Research paper presentation:  20 %
Project 1:                                 15 %
Project 2:                                                   25 %
Midterm:                                  15 %
Final Exam:                              25 %