Self-optimizing block transfer in web service grids

ABSTRACT

Nowadays, Web Services (WSs) play an increasingly important role in Web data management solutions, since they offer a practical solution for accessing and manipulating data sources spanning administrative domains. Nevertheless, they are notoriously slow and transferring large data volumes across WSs becomes the main bottleneck in such WS-based applications. This paper deals with the problem of minimizing at runtime, in a self-managing way, the datatransfer cost of a WS encapsulating a data source. To reducethe transfer cost, the data volume is typically divided intoblocks. In this case, response time exhibits a quadratic-like, non-linear behavior with regards to the block size; as such, minimizing the transfer cost entails finding the optimum block size. This situation is encountered in several systems, such as WS Management Systems (WSMSs) for DBMS-like data management over wide area service-based networks, and WSs for accessing and integrating traditional DBMSs. The main challenges in this problem include (i) the unavailability of an analytical model; (ii) the presence of noise, which incurs local minima; (iii) the volatility of the environment, which results into a moving optimum operating point; and (iv) the requirements for fast convergence to the optimal size of the request from the side of the client rather than of the server, and for low overshooting. This paper presents two novel solutions for detecting the optimum block size during data transmission, thus yielding lower response times. The solutions are inspired by the broader areas of runtime optimization and switching extremum control. They incorporate heuristics to avoid local optimal points, and address all the afore-mentioned challenges. The effectiveness andeffciency of the solutions is verified through empirical evaluation in real cases.

REFERENCES

• 1: Tarek F. Abdelzaher , Kang G. Shin , Nina Bhatti, Performance Guarantees for Web Server End-Systems: A Control-Theoretical Approach, IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, v.13 n.1, p.80-96, January 2002 [doi>10.1109/71.980028]
• 2: T. F. Abdelzaher, A. Stankovic, C. Lu, R. Zhang, and Y. Lu. Feedback performance control in software services. IEEE Control Systems Magazine, 23(3), 2003.
• 3: M. N. Alpdemir, A. Mukherjee, N. W. Paton, P. Watson, A. A. A. Fernandes, A. Gounaris, and J. Smith. Service-based distributed querying on the grid. In Proc. of 1st Int. Conf. on Service Oriented Computing - ICSOC, pages 467--482. Springer, 2003.
• 4: N. Alpdemir, A. Gounaris, A. Mukherjee, D. Fitzgerald, N. W. Paton, P. Watson, R. Sakellariou, A. A. Fernandes, and J. Smith. Experience on Performance Evaluation with OGSA-DQP. In Proceedings of the UK e-Science All Hands Meeting, 2005.
• 5: Mario Antonioletti , Malcolm Atkinson , Rob Baxter , Andrew Borley , Neil P. Chue Hong , Brian Collins , Neil Hardman , Alastair C. Hume , Alan Knox , Mike Jackson , Amy Krause , Simon Laws , James Magowan , Norman W. Paton , Dave Pearson , Tom Sugden , Paul Watson , Martin Westhead, The design and implementation of Grid database services in OGSA-DAI: Research Articles, Concurrency and Computation: Practice & Experience, v.17 n.2-4, p.357-376, February 2005 [doi>10.1002/cpe.v17:2/4]
• 6: Kartik B. Ariyur , Miroslav Krstic, Real Time Optimization by Extremum Seeking Control, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, NY, 2003
• 7: K. J. Aström and B. Wittenmark. Adaptive Control. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, USA, 1995.
• 8: Y. Diao, F. Eskesen, S. Forehlich, J. Hellerstein, L. Spainhower, and M. Surendra. Generic online optimization of multiple configuration parameters with application to a database server. DSOM, pages 3--15, 2003.
• 9: Yixin Diao , Joseph L. Hellerstein , Sujay Parekh , Rean Griffith , Gail Kaiser , Dan Phung, Self-Managing Systems: A Control Theory Foundation, Proceedings of the 12th IEEE International Conference and Workshops on Engineering of Computer-Based Systems, p.441-448, April 04-07, 2005 [doi>10.1109/ECBS.2005.60]
• 10: B. Dobrzelecki, M. Antonioletti, J. Schopf, A. Hume, M. Atkinson, N. C. Hong, M. Jackson, K. Karasavvas, A. Krause, M. Parsons, T. Sugden, and E. Theocharopoulos. Profiling OGSA-DAI Performance for Common Use Patterns. In Proceedings of the UK e-Science All Hands Meeting, 2006.
• 11: O. Flardh, K. Johansson and M. Johansson. A new feedback control mechanism for error correction in packet-switched networks. pages 488--493, 2005. IEEE Conference on Decision and Control.
• 12: S. Parekh , N. Gandhi , J. Hellerstein , D. Tilbury , T. Jayram , J. Bigus, Using Control Theory to Achieve Service Level Objectives In Performance Management, Real-Time Systems, v.23 n.1-2, p.127-141, July-September 2002 [doi>10.1023/A:1015350520175]
• 13: Anastasios Gounaris , Rizos Sakellariou , Norman W. Paton , Alvaro A. Fernandes, A novel approach to resource scheduling for parallel query processing on computational grids, Distributed and Parallel Databases, v.19 n.2-3, p.87-106, May 2006 [doi>10.1007/s10619-006-8490-2]
• 14: A. Gounaris, J. Smith, N. W. Paton, R. Sakellariou, A. A. A. Fernandes, and P. Watson. Adapting to changing resource performance in grid query processing. In Data Management in Grids, First VLDB Workshop, DMG 2005, pages 30--44, 2005.
• 15: J. Hellerstein, Y. Diao, S. Parekh, and D. Tilbury. Control engineering for computing systems. IEEE Control Systems Magazine, 25(6):56--68, 2005.
• 16: David T. Liu , Michael J. Franklin , Devesh Parekh, GridDB: a relational interface for the grid, Proceedings of the 2003 ACM SIGMOD international conference on Management of data, June 09-12, 2003, San Diego, California [doi>10.1145/872757.872846]
• 17: X. Liu, L. Sha, Y. Diao, S. Froehlich, J. L. Hellerstein, and S. S. Parekh. Online response time optimization of apache web server. In IWQoS, pages 461--478, 2003.
• 18: Chenyang Lu , Xiaorui Wang , Xenofon Koutsoukos, Feedback Utilization Control in Distributed Real-Time Systems with End-to-End Tasks, IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, v.16 n.6, p.550-561, June 2005 [doi>10.1109/TPDS.2005.73]
• 19: Sivaramakrishnan Narayanan , Umit Catalyurek , Tahsin Kurc , Xi Zhang , Joel Saltz, Applying Database Support for Large Scale Data Driven Science in Distributed Environments, Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Grid Computing, p.141, November 17-17, 2003
• 20: A. L. Peressini , Francis E. Sullivan , J. J. Uhl, Jr., The mathematics of nonlinear programming, Springer-Verlag New York, Inc., New York, NY, 1988
• 21: Y. Raghavachari, D. Reimer, and R. Johnson. The deployer's problem: Configuring application servers for performance and reliability. pages 3--15, 2003. ICSE.
• 22: Utkarsh Srivastava , Kamesh Munagala , Jennifer Widom , Rajeev Motwani, Query optimization over web services, Proceedings of the 32nd international conference on Very large data bases, September 12-15, 2006, Seoul, Korea
• 23: P.E. E. Wellstead , M. B. Zarrop, Self-Tuning Systems: Control and Signal Processing, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, NY, 1991

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
      C.2.4 Distributed Systems

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.4 INFORMATION SYSTEMS APPLICATIONS
      H.4.0 General

General Terms:
Algorithms

Keywords:
autonomic computing, data grids, self-optimization, service-oriented data management, web service performance