Synergy: Sharing-Aware Component Composition for Distributed Stream Processing Systems
Many emerging on-line data analysis applications require applying continuous query operations such as correlation, aggregation, and filtering to data streams in real-time. Distributed stream processing systems allow in-network stream processing to achieve better scalability and quality-of-service (QoS) provision. In this paper we present Synergy, a distributed stream processing middleware that provides sharing-aware component composition. Synergy enables efficient reuse of both data streams and processing components, while composing distributed stream processing applications with QoS demands. Synergy provides a set of fully distributed algorithms to discover and evaluate the reusability of available data streams and processing components when instantiating new stream applications. For QoS provision, Synergy performs QoS impact projection to examine whether the shared processing can cause QoS violations on currently running applications. We have implemented a prototype of the Synergy middleware and evaluated its performance on both PlanetLab and simulation testbeds. The experimental results show that Synergy can achieve much better resource utilization and QoS provision than previously proposed schemes, by judiciously sharing streams and processing components during application composition.

title: On Composing Stream Applications in Peer-to-Peer Environments
abstract: Stream processing has become increasingly important as many emerging applications call for continuous real-time processing over data streams, such as voice-over-IP telephony, security surveillance, and sensor data analysis. In this paper, we propose a composable stream processing system for cooperative peer-to-peer environments. The system can dynamically select and compose stream processing elements located on different peers into user desired applications. We investigate multiple alternative approaches to composing stream applications: 1) global-state-based centralized versus local-state-based distributed algorithms for initially composing stream applications at setup phase. The centralized algorithm performs periodical global state maintenance while the distributed algorithm performs on-demand state collection. 2) Reactive versus proactive failure recovery schemes for maintaining composed stream applications during runtime. The reactive failure recovery algorithm dynamically recomposes a new stream application upon failures while the proactive approach maintains a number of backup compositions for failure recovery. We conduct both theoretical analysis and experimental evaluations to study the properties of different approaches. Our study illustrates the performance and overhead trade-offs among different design alternatives, which can provide important guidance for selecting proper algorithms to compose stream applications in cooperative peer-to-peer environments

title: Dynamic QoS-aware multimedia service configuration in ubiquitous computing environments
abstract: Ubiquitous computing promotes the proliferation of various stationary, embedded and mobile devices interconnected by heterogeneous networks. It leads to a highly dynamic distributed system with many devices and services coming and going frequently. Many emerging distributed multimedia applications are being deployed in such a computing environment. In order to make the experience for a user truly seamless and to provide soft performance guarantees, we must meet the following challenges: (1) users should be able to perform tasks continuously, despite changes of resources, devices and locations; (2) users should be able to efficiently utilize all accessible resources within runtime environments to receive the best possible Quality-of-Service (QoS). In this paper, we propose an integrated QoS-aware service configuration model to address the above problems. The configuration model includes two tiers: (1) service composition tier, which is responsible for choosing and composing current available service components appropriately and coordinating arbitrary interactions between them to achieve the user's objectives; and (2) service distribution tier which is responsible for dividing an application into several partitions and distributing them to different available devices appropriately. Our initial experimental results based on both prototype and simulations show the soundness of our model and algorithms.

title: QoS-assured service composition in managed service overlay networks
abstract: Many value-added and content delivery services are being offered via service level agreements (SLAs). These services can be interconnected to form a service overlay network (SON) over the Internet. Service composition in SON has emerged as a cost-effective approach to quickly creating new services. Previous research has addressed the reliability, adaptability, and compatibility issues for composed services. However little has been done to manage generic quality-of-service (QoS) provisioning for composed services, based on the SLA contracts of individual services. In this paper we present QUEST a QoS assUred composEable Service infrasTructure, to address the problem. QUEST framework provides: (1) initial service composition, which can compose a qualified service path under multiple QoS constraints (e.g., response time, availability). If multiple qualified service paths exist, QUEST chooses the best one according to the load balancing metric; and (2) dynamic service composition, which can dynamically recompose the service path to quickly recover from service outages and QoS violations. Different from the previous work, QUEST can simultaneously achieve QoS assurances and good load balancing in SON.

title: Performance evaluation of DCCP: A focus on smoothness and TCP-friendliness
abstract: Recent years have seen dramatic increases of the use of multimedia applications on the Internet, which typically either lack congestion control or use proprietary congestion control mechanisms. This can easily cause congestion collapse or compatibility problems. Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (Dccp) fills the gap betweenUdp andTcp, featuring congestion control rather than reliability for packet-switched rich content delivery with high degree of flexibility. We present aDccp model designed and implemented withOpnet Modeler, and the experiments and evaluation focused on largely the smoothness of the data rates, and the fairness between concurrentDccp flows andTcp flows. We foundDccp-ccid3 demonstrates stable data rates under different scenarios, and the fairness betweenDccp andTcp is only achieved under certain conditions. We also validated that the throughput ofDccp-Ccid3 is proportional to the average packet size, and relatively fixed packet size is critical for the optimal operation ofDccp. Problems in the slow start phase and insufficient receiver buffer size were identified and we hereby proposed solutions on this.RésuméLe nombre d’applications multimédias sur l’internet a considérablement augmenté ces dernières années. Ces applications généralement ne gèrent pas les congestions ou bien utilisent des mécanismes de contrôle propriétaires. Il peut en résulter facilement des congestions graves ou des problèmes d’incompatibilité. Le protocoleDccp (Datagram Congestion Control Protocol) se positionne entreUdp etTcp puisqu ’il fournit, pour des paquets multimédias, un contrôle de congestion hautement flexible mais sans la fiabilité de délivrance. Cet article présente un modèleDccp conçu et implémenté avec le simulateurOpnet. Les expérimentations et les analyses portent principalement sur le lissage des débits et l’équité entre des fluxDccp etTcp concurrents. On montre queDccp-Ccid3 affiche des débits stables sous divers scénarios et que l’équité entreDccp etTcp n’est atteinte que sous certaines conditions. On valide également que le débit deDccp-Ccid3 est proportionnel à la taille moyenne des paquets et que le fait d’avoir des paquets de taille relativement constante est un facteur essentiel pour un fonctionnement optimal deDccp. Les problèmes pendant la phase de démarrage lent et ceux dus à une mémoire tampon insuffisante côté récepteur sont également analysés et résolus.

title: Real-time service provisioning for mobile and wireless networks
abstract: As mobile devices and wireless networks are becoming ubiquitous, the interest of users to deploy real-time applications, e.g. online gaming or Voice-over-IP in such environments is also increasing. Due to the difference between traditional and wireless networks, in particular in terms of available bandwidth and network structure, the concepts used for supporting real-time applications in both networks are different. This paper gives an overview of the key technical challenges that are fundamental and need to be solved in order to easily support real-time applications in wireless and mobile environments. In a first step, issues related to service provisioning in mobile networks are discussed. This is followed by a look at the Quality of Service supported by wireless networks and possible techniques for improving it. Finally, concepts for securing the communication between the users of real-time applications in wireless and mobile networks are presented. For each of these issues, we provide a detailed analysis and an overview of the state-of-the-art. Moreover, we illustrate the main points using distributed online games as an example.

title: Manifold splines
abstract: Constructing splines whose parametric domain is an arbitrary manifold and effectively computing such splines in real-world applications are of fundamental importance in solid and shape modeling, geometric design, graphics, etc. This paper presents a general theoretical and computational framework, in which spline surfaces defined over planar domains can be systematically extended to manifold domains with arbitrary topology with or without boundaries. We study the affine structure of domain manifolds in depth and prove that the existence of manifold splines is equivalent to the existence of a manifold's affine atlas. Based on our theoretical breakthrough, we also develop a set of practical algorithms to generalize triangular B-spline surfaces from planar domains to manifold domains. We choose triangular B-splines mainly because of its generality and many of its attractive properties. As a result, our new spline surface defined over any manifold is a piecewise polynomial surface with high parametric continuity without the need for any patching and/or trimming operations. Through our experiments, we hope to demonstrate that our novel manifold splines are both powerful and efficient in modeling arbitrarily complicated geometry and representing continuously-varying physical quantities defined over shapes of arbitrary topology.

title: A Greedy Algorithm for Optimal Recombination
abstract: Let Σ be an alphabet and Σn denote the collection of all sequences of length n over Σ. For any s1 = ajaj+1 . . . an+s2 = b1b2 . . . bj bj+1 . . . bn ∈ Σn, a recombination of s1 and s2 at position j is defined as an operation that crosses s1 and s2 at position j and generates t1 = a1a2 . . .  . bn and t2 = b1b2 . . .  Denote A and S two collections of sequences. In this paper, we discuss generating A from S by a series of recombinations in minimum number of steps. We present a greedy algorithm for finding the optimal recombination evolutionary history from S to any tree A of sequences when |S| = 2.

title: DIVERGE: phylogeny-based analysis for functional-structural divergence of a protein family
abstract: DetectIng Variability in Evolutionary Rates among GEnes (DIVERGE) is a software system to study functional divergence of a protein family by detecting site-specific change in evolutionary rate using a multiple alignment of amino acid sequences for a given phylogenetic tree. The program first conducts a statistical test for site-specific rate shifts along the tree, and predicting candidate amino acid residues responsible for functional divergence based on posterior analysis. These results can then be mapped on the 3D protein structure if available.


AVAILABILITY
DIVERGE is available free of charge from http://xgu1.zool.iastate.edu/. Distribution packages for both Linux and Microsoft Windows operating systems are available, including manual and example files.