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

GRIDCC: Real-time workflow system

The Grid is a concept which allows the sharing of resources between distributed communities, allowing each to progress towards potentially different goals. As adoption of the Grid increases so are the activities that people wish to conduct through it. The GRIDCC project is a European Union funded project addressing the issues of integrating instruments into the Grid. This increases the requirement of workflows and Quality of Service upon these workflows as many of these instruments have real-time requirements. In this paper we present the workflow management service within the GRIDCC project which is tasked with optimising the workflows and ensuring that they meet the pre-defined QoS requirements specified upon them

Winning Hearts and Minds: Tactics of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in the Early Roman Empire

The most common strategy for Romanizing a province was through developing connections with elites in the indigenous society coupled with (in many cases) the inclusion of regional gods into the Roman pantheon. These ties were cemented as Romans adopted the provincial religious deities and the sons of prominent locals were sent to Rome for the finest education of the day. This system allowed for relative stability in the provinces, particularly when the Roman provincial governor was sensitive to local customs. What about those indigenous people whose goals conflicted with those of Rome? How does one combat a monolithic power with the most formidable army yet seen? This paper will examine three different revolts- all with varying outcomes- in the first few years of the Imperial Period to analyze the tactical and strategic successes and failures of the insurgents and how they were combated by the Empire. These specific examples are chosen for their differing outcomes and their approximate relation in time (All three were fought within 60 years). In analyzing these the answer of how to successfully rebel against the early Roman Empire will be deduced, as well as how to defeat an insurgency, something many modern countries still grapple with

Collaborative e-science architecture for Reaction Kinetics research community

This paper presents a novel collaborative e-science architecture (CeSA) to address two challenging issues in e-science that arise from the management of heterogeneous distributed environments: (i) how to provide individual scientists an integrated environment to collaborate with each other in distributed, loosely coupled research communities where each member might be using a disparate range of tools; and (ii) how to provide easy access to a range of computationally intensive resources from a desktop. The Reaction Kinetics research community was used to capture the requirements and in the evaluation of the proposed architecture. The result demonstrated the feasibility of the approach and the potential benefits of the CeSA

Study for the Iceni Project: can staff enable change with their interventions? : Service users’ and staff’s points of view

I did my thesis in February-April 2014 during three months in exchange in Eastern England, Ipswich. I did my thesis for a local project called “Iceni Project.” The project is meant for families where at least one family member is struggling with addiction problems and the idea is to comprehensively support the whole family. The Iceni Project sees that the problem is not just the addiction; it is much more about the problems behind the addiction. The idea of my thesis was to gather information about how well the staff members achieve change through their interventions with clients and how change happens within practice context. The information was gathered by interviewing both the project’s staff and service users. Also I was trying to find some development ideas for the project. My study was qualitative. I interviewed seven staff members and three service users who are nearly at end of the process of Iceni’s work. Before the interviews, I had opened social work with children and families, so that the framework where Iceni Project operates will be more understandable. Also it was important to open the thesis’ central terms: change, intervention and addiction. In the end of my thesis, I compared staff members’ and service users’ views to each other and I made conclusions according to these views. After this, I interviewed three more staff members and tested the conclusions which I had found. My thesis showed that intervention and change is possible with Iceni Project’s work methods from the staff members’ and service users’ points of view. Three main intervention methods in the project seemed to be: crisis intervention method, relationship based model and sharing awareness of service users’ issues and values. Iceni’s methods were very unique and viewpoints were very client centric. The clients saw that the project’s best part is that the service users are seen as they are and the staff is not criticizing them. According to the staff, it is important to give positive feedback to the service users and not be focused on the client’s negative sides. Development ideas were related most often to the ideas of how to broaden out the Iceni Project’s work. According to the interviews, the project’s methods are very unique and workable, so it is necessary to broaden the Iceni Project in some way. The discussions revealed that it could be broadened out even to other areas in the UK so it would reach all the potential clients. Also by doing this, interventions could possibly be made earlier. Some of the service users have trust issues and they feel that they need more time to build trust. Clients are now referred to the project often when they are already in a crisis situation, and there is no time because the work needs to be done immediately because the crisis demands this. According to the interviews, Iceni needs to develop their endings. Endings were seen as difficult and not happening very well. Development ideas were that the service users have to be empowered more and one needs to start discussing the endings earlier with the clients. Also it was seen that it would be important to give a copy of the action plan to the service users so they could follow their own path better and see what they have already reached.Toteutin opinnäytetyöni kansainvälisessä vaihdossa opintojeni aikana helmi-huhtikuussa 2014. Tein työni Itä-Englannissa, Ipswichissa, paikalliseen projektiin nimeltä ”Iceni Project”. Projekti on tarkoitettu perheille, joissa yhdellä tai useammalla perheenjäsenellä on jokin päihderiippuvuus. Projektin tarkoituksena on tukea kokonaisvaltaisesti perhettä perheen kaikissa ongelmissa. Projektin ideologiana on se, että ongelma ei ole vain päihderiippuvuus vaan kaikki ne ongelmat, jotka ovat johtaneet riippuvuuteen. Opinnäytetyöni tarkoituksena oli tutkia miten muutos mahdollistetaan työntekijöiden intervention avulla ja miten muutos toteutuu projektin käytännön työssä. Tarkoituksenani oli tarkastella sekä Iceni-projektin henkilökunnan että asiakkaiden näkökulmia haastattelemalla osaa heistä. Tarkoituksena oli kerätä myös kehittämisehdotuksia Iceni-projektia varten. Tutkimukseni oli kvalitatiivinen. Haastattelin teemahaastattelun avulla seitsemää projektin työntekijää ja kolmea asiakkuuden loppuvaiheessa olevaa asiakasta. Ennen haastatteluja olin avannut teorian avulla Englannin sosiaalityön viitekehystä lasten ja perheiden parissa, ja näin valottanut Iceni-projektin toimintaympäristöä. Lisäksi keskeistä oli avata opinnäytetyön keskeisiä käsitteitä: muutos, interventio ja riippuvuus. Opinnäytetyöni lopussa vertasin henkilökunnan ja asiakkaiden näkökulmia toisiinsa ja muodostin vertailun avulla päätelmiä. Tämän vertailun jälkeen testasin saamiani päätelmiä haastattelemalla vielä kolmea työntekijää ja testasin saamieni päätelmien paikkaansa pitävyyttä. Opinnäytetyöni osoitti, että henkilökunnan ja asiakkaiden mukaan Iceni-projektin työmuodoilla avulla voidaan mahdollistaa intervention kautta muutos. Keskeisimmät interventiokeinot olivat haastattelujen perusteella: kriisi-interventio, ihmissuhdemalli ja asiakkaiden tietoisuuden lisääminen heidän omista asioistaan ja arvoistaan. Sekä henkilökunta että asiakkaat puhuivat myönteisesti Iceni-projektia kohtaan. Projektin toimintakeinot nähtiin ainutlaatuisina ja hyvin asiakaskeskeisinä. Asiakkaat näkivät projektin parhaimpina puolina asiakkaiden kohtaamisen sellaisina kuin he ovat eikä heitä kritisoida. Henkilökunnan mukaan on tärkeää antaa asiakkaille positiivista palautetta eikä keskittyä negatiivisiin puoliin. Kehittämisehdotuksia nostettiin esille etenkin projektin toiminnan laajentamista kohtaan. Koska projektin työkeinot nähtiin ainutlaatuisina toimivina keinoina, koettiin haastattelujen perusteella tärkeäksi laajentaa projektin toimintaa jopa muualle Iso-Britanniaan, jotta palvelu tavoittaisi kaikki potentiaaliset asiakkaat. Lisäksi interventio voitaisiin mahdollistaa aiemmin, mikäli projektin toiminta laajenisi. Osa asiakkaista kokee tarvitsevansa enemmän aikaa luottamuksen rakentamiseen henkilökuntaa kohtaan. Asiakkaat ohjautuvat nyt pitkälti kriisitilanteissa projektiin eikä aikaa tämän vuoksi ole, kriisitilanteissa tulee toimia nopeasti. Haastatteluista nousi esille, että asiakkuuden lopettamisessa tarvitaan vielä paljon kehitettävää. Haastateltujen työntekijöiden mukaan asiakassuhteen päättyminen ei suju hyvin. Kehit-tämisehdotuksia nostettiin esille seuraavasti: asiakkaita tulee voimaannuttaa entistä enemmän tekemään itse asioitaan ja asiakkuuden päättymisestä tulee keskustella aiemmin asiakkaiden kanssa. Lisäksi asiakassuunnitelman kopio voitaisiin antaa asiakkaille, jotta he pystyisivät paremmin seuramaan omaa polkuansa ja nähdä, mitä he ovat jo saavuttaneet projektin aikana

The countryside of Roman Britain: a Gallic perspective

The publication of the RurLand project (Rural Landscape in North-East Gaul) has provided an opportunity to compare methodologies and results with those of The Rural Settlement of Roman Britain Project. Two themes, which draw out the asymmetrical development of settlement in the two regions, are examined: the very different impacts of the Roman Conquest of Gaul and of Britain on settlement numbers and settlement continuity, and the development of the agricultural economy and its relationship with the frontiers of Britain and Germany, as reflected in the growth and decline of villa estates in Britain and Gaul

Beyond Romanization: An Indigenous Study of Cultural Change in Classical Britain

The Roman Empire is among the best-known empires in the world, renowned for unifying vastly different peoples and lands. The process of these unifications was, at times, something resembling peaceful, but was at other times much more violent. Regardless of the method of acquisition, peoples brought into the Roman Empire always experienced some degree of cultural change. The modern study of this cultural change has most often been examined through the lens of Romanization, a mostly one-way transfer of Roman cultural practices onto the conquered territory and culture. Romanization, however, presents too narrow and too historically imperialist an approach to the cultural changes brought about by Roman influence. Accordingly, using a research framework heavily influenced by Indigenous Studies theory, this study examines the peoples of Late Iron Age Britain prior to the beginning of Roman occupation and after. Using such a framework and a definition of culture that includes both elites and non-elites, the cultural changes catalyzed in Late Iron Age Britain by the introduction of Roman influence can be shown to go beyond the limited focus of Romanization on mere cultural transfer. These cultural changes are explored within different aspects of culture in terms of the cultural loss, resistance, adaptation, and survivance experienced by the Britons at the Roman towns of Venta Icenorum and Aquae Sulis

Managing Uncertainty: A Case for Probabilistic Grid Scheduling

The Grid technology is evolving into a global, service-orientated architecture, a universal platform for delivering future high demand computational services. Strong adoption of the Grid and the utility computing concept is leading to an increasing number of Grid installations running a wide range of applications of different size and complexity. In this paper we address the problem of elivering deadline/economy based scheduling in a heterogeneous application environment using statistical properties of job historical executions and its associated meta-data. This approach is motivated by a study of six-month computational load generated by Grid applications in a multi-purpose Grid cluster serving a community of twenty e-Science projects. The observed job statistics, resource utilisation and user behaviour is discussed in the context of management approaches and models most suitable for supporting a probabilistic and autonomous scheduling architecture