A Taxonomy of Workflow Management Systems for Grid Computing

With the advent of Grid and application technologies, scientists and engineers are building more and more complex applications to manage and process large data sets, and execute scientific experiments on distributed resources. Such application scenarios require means for composing and executing complex workflows. Therefore, many efforts have been made towards the development of workflow management systems for Grid computing. In this paper, we propose a taxonomy that characterizes and classifies various approaches for building and executing workflows on Grids. We also survey several representative Grid workflow systems developed by various projects world-wide to demonstrate the comprehensiveness of the taxonomy. The taxonomy not only highlights the design and engineering similarities and differences of state-of-the-art in Grid workflow systems, but also identifies the areas that need further research.Comment: 29 pages, 15 figure

The Role of International Rules in Blockchain-Based Cross-Border Commercial Disputes

[excerpt] The concept of online dispute resolution (ODR) is not new. 1 But, with the advent of Web 3.0, the distributed web that facilitates pseudonymous and cross-border transactions via blockchain\u27s distributed ledger technology, 2 the idea of, and pressing need for, appropriate dispute resolution models for blockchain-based disputes to support this novel system of distributed consensus and trust of which blockchain proponents boast, is a primary concern in rapid development. 3 The common goal of each project is to utilize smart contracts to facilitate superior, quicker[,] and less expensive proceedings by eliminating so many of the tedious and protracted trappings of traditional arbitral proceedings, such as the sending and receiving of documents via courier. , Despite myriad approaches, all emerging blockchain-based dispute resolution services (BDR solutions) generally seek to bridge the divide between automated performance mechanisms, like smart contracts, and the human judgment traditionally required to settle legal disputes.5 How our existing legal frameworks must develop to ensure that smart contracts 6 facilitate, rather than frustrate, the parties\u27 intent is a critically important question to ask as the blockchain stack\u27s infrastructure and application layers are being built and, ultimately, scaled. Indeed, interest is high in the race to create alternative dispute resolution mechanisms to resolve disputes arising from blockchain-based commercial transactions that, due to the transnational, borderless, pseudonymous, and distributed nature of blockchain, clearly necessitate international solutions.

Chainspace: A Sharded Smart Contracts Platform

Chainspace is a decentralized infrastructure, known as a distributed ledger, that supports user defined smart contracts and executes user-supplied transactions on their objects. The correct execution of smart contract transactions is verifiable by all. The system is scalable, by sharding state and the execution of transactions, and using S-BAC, a distributed commit protocol, to guarantee consistency. Chainspace is secure against subsets of nodes trying to compromise its integrity or availability properties through Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT), and extremely high-auditability, non-repudiation and `blockchain' techniques. Even when BFT fails, auditing mechanisms are in place to trace malicious participants. We present the design, rationale, and details of Chainspace; we argue through evaluating an implementation of the system about its scaling and other features; we illustrate a number of privacy-friendly smart contracts for smart metering, polling and banking and measure their performance

Proof-of-Concept Application - Annual Report Year 2

This document first gives an introduction to Application Layer Networks and subsequently presents the catallactic resource allocation model and its integration into the middleware architecture of the developed prototype. Furthermore use cases for employed service models in such scenarios are presented as general application scenarios as well as two very detailed cases: Query services and Data Mining services. This work concludes by describing the middleware implementation and evaluation as well as future work in this area. --Grid Computing