Patent ID: 8832156

Claim:
A method at an entity in a distributed computing system, the method comprising: providing an input arranged to connect to the distributed computing system and access a distributed computing graph associated with an activity to be carried out in the distributed computing system, the distributed computing graph representing currently executing processes in the distributed computing system; arranging a processor to provide a dynamic mapping between the distributed computing graph and a data structure at the entity holding a local view of the distributed computing graph such that changes in the distributed computing graph are reflected in the local view; and providing a user interface enabling control of the activity by modifying the local view based on input received at the user interface which modifies the local view, the local view indicating which processes represented by the distributed computing graph are executed at the entity and which processes are executed remote of the entity, the method further comprising: receiving input at the user interface which modifies the local view and wherein the method comprises using the dynamic mapping between the local view and the distributed computing graph to update the distributed computing graph according to the modified local view in order to control the activity; receiving user input specifying a second local view, attempting to connect to a distributed computing graph corresponding to the second local view and if successful updating the second local view according to the corresponding distributed computing graph; or receiving user input specifying the second local view, attempting to connect to the distributed computing graph corresponding to the second local view and if unsuccessful starting a new distributed computing graph corresponding to the second local view.