A novel ecological network‐based computation platform as a grid middleware system

Next‐generation grid systems where the emphasis shifts to distributed global collaboration, a service‐oriented approach, and information layer issues exhibit a strong sense of automation. Requirements for these systems resemble the self‐organizing and the self‐healing properties of natural ecosystems. Inspired by this resemblance, we introduce some key ecological concepts and mechanisms into the design for the third‐generation grid systems. In this article, a novel Ecological Network‐based Grid Middleware (ENGM), which is based on Ecological Network Computing Environment (ENCE), is proposed. First, we discuss how to design the ENCE by agent‐oriented approaches based on the key concepts and principles of ecosystems. ENCE provides a new computing and problem‐solving paradigm by combining natural ecosystem mechanisms with agent technologies. Then, we design the ENGM with built‐in mechanisms to support desirable requirements of new grid systems, namely scalability, adaptability, self‐organization, simplicity, and survivability. Based on Jeffery's conceptual model, we also present a corresponding grid‐computing prototype that embeds ENGM layers from the implementation point of view. The ENGM will be useful to address the challenges of the third‐generation grid systems. Finally, as a demonstration, we built an ENGM platform‐based commercial grid service environment and developed a prototype of enterprise supply chain management system. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed ENGM satisfies the requirements of the next‐generation grid and is suitable for new generation grid applications. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Int Syst 19: 859–884, 2004.     

Understanding Web services

Web services are a new breed of Web applications. These independent application components are published on to the Web in such a way that other Web applications can find and use them. They take the Web to its next stage of evolution, in which software components can discover other software components and conduct business transactions. Examples of Web services include a credit card service that processes credit card transactions for a given account number, a market data service that provides stock market data associated with a specified stock symbol, and an airline service that provides flight schedule, availability, and reservation functionalities. Major vendors like IBM, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, and Sun, among others, are investing heavily in Web services technology. Ranging from simple to complex, Web services bring the promise of flexible, open-standards-based, distributed computing to the Internet     

面向多自治域网格的信息服务模型及其实现

网格是实现分布异构资源共享的有效模式,而信息服务实现系统服务与资源的有效管理,是网格系统的重要组成部分.ChinaGrid是由多个自治域组成的大规模网格,现有的信息服务不能满足此类系统特性与应用需求.文中提出网格信息服务体系GISA2.0,强化了域自治管理和资源信息的安全性.GISA2.0实现了可扩展的网格信息模型和面向服务、支持多种监控信息聚集的层次化信息管理框架.提出了基于分布XPath引擎的多域资源信息检索机制,实现了安全、快速和用户相关的虚拟全局资源视图.     

Artificial immune systems for the detection of credit card fraud: an architecture,prototype and preliminary results

Some biological phenomena offer clues to solving real‐life, complex problems. Researchers have been studying techniques such as neural networks and genetic algorithms for computational intelligence and their applications to such complex problems. The problem of security management is one of the major concerns in the development of eBusiness services and networks. Recent incidents have shown that the perpetrators of cybercrimes are using increasingly sophisticated methods. Hence, it is necessary to investigate non‐traditional mechanisms, such as biological techniques, to manage the security of evolving eBusiness networks and services. Towards this end, this paper investigates the use of an Artificial Immune System (AIS). The AIS emulates the mechanism of human immune systems that save human bodies from complex natural biological attacks. The paper discusses the use of AIS on one aspect of security management, viz. the detection of credit card fraud. The solution is illustrated with a case study on the management of frauds in credit card transactions, although this technique may be used in a range of security management applications in eBusiness.     

Communication mechanisms in ecological network-based grid middleware for service emergence

Next generation grid systems are heading for globally collaborative, service-oriented and live information systems that exhibit a strong sense of automation. A collection of autonomous agents is searched, assembled, and coordinated in a grid middleware system to produce desirable grid services. An effective communication mechanism is vital to the effectiveness of the step to build a novel grid middleware system. In this study, we provide our grid middleware with a flexible communication solution to implement the complicated behaviors among different agents. We propose a transport mechanism of grid middleware, named as ecological network communication language (ENCL) and ecological network interaction protocol (ENIP) respectively from a low-level to a high-level implementation strategy of a communication mechanism. A series of experiments demonstrate that a service with some of the desired properties can emerge from interacting agents via the proposed solution.     

云计算技术及其安全性研究

云计算被视为IT业的下一代技术架构,其概念于2007年提出,是随着虚拟化技术、分布式存储技术、网格技术和自动化管理技术的发展而产生的,能够提供一种更加灵活配置应用的途径。但是,云计算将应用软件和数据库转移到庞大的数据中心,而数据中心对数据和服务的管理并不值得完全信赖。随之产生的安全问题是提高云服务质量的难点。同时,合理采用云计算技术也能够加强产品的安全性。首先阐述了云计算环境的特性及安全需求,其次,在介绍云计算安全研究现状的基础上,对安全性评估进行了分析,最后对云计算的未来发展趋势作了展望。     

An agent-based approach for dynamic adjustment of scheduled jobs in computational grids

Grid computing is a newly developed technology for complex systems with large-scale resource sharing, wide-area communication, and multi-institutional collaboration. Grid scheduling is an important infrastructure in the grid computing environment. Most of the existing grids scheduling methods focus on maximizing processor utilization without taking grid load into consideration. This may lead to significant inefficiencies in performance such as large job queues and processing delays. In this paper, we propose a multiagent-based scheduling system for computational grids with a new approach. Agent technology is suitable for a computational grid because of the dynamic, heterogeneous, and autonomous nature of the grid. The main idea of the proposed system is a combination of a static scheduling using a fixed scheduling algorithm and a dynamic adjustment through the autonomous behavior of agents. The superiority of the proposed system, in reducing the load of the grid and minimizing the response time for executing user applications, is demonstrated by simulation experiments.     

Distributed data mining patterns and services: an architecture and experiments

Distributed data mining implements techniques for analyzing data on distributed computing systems by exploiting data distribution and parallel algorithms. The grid is a computing infrastructure for implementing distributed high‐performance applications and solving complex problems, offering effective support to the implementation and use of data mining and knowledge discovery systems. The Web Services Resource Framework has become the standard for the implementation of grid services and applications, and it can be exploited for developing high‐level services for distributed data mining applications. This paper describes how distributed data mining patterns, such as collective learning, ensemble learning, and meta‐learning models, can be implemented as Web Services Resource Framework mining services by exploiting the grid infrastructure. The goal of this work was to design a distributed architectural model that can be exploited for different distributed mining patterns deployed as grid services for the analysis of dispersed data sources. In order to validate such an approach, we presented also the implementation of two clustering algorithms on the developed architecture. In particular, the distributed k‐means and distributed expectation maximization were exploited as pilot examples to show the suitability of the implemented service‐oriented framework. An extensive evaluation of its performance was provided. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

一种基于多Agent系统的云服务自组织管理方法

在开放动态的互联网环境下的云服务呈现出发散、动态演化、异构等特征,为了适应多样的应用需求以及持续变化的云环境,云需要以灵活、适应的方法来有效地管理和提供云服务.针对这一需求,提出了一种云服务自组织管理方法,该方法利用agent的环境感知和自主行为决策的能力,依据它的职责实现对云服务的自主管理,并通过agent间的交互以自组织的方式实现对服务资源的有效管理,进而适应云环境和应用需求的变化;提出了支持上述方法和机制的实现技术,包括云服务自组织管理的核心机制和实现框架、云服务汇聚和提供的运行机制及相关实现算法.利用支持语义Web服务发现匹配的公共测试数据设计并完成了两组验证实验,实验结果表明:所提出的方法可以在持续变化的云环境下有效地管理和提供云服务,进而满足动态多样化的应用需求.     

Optimization strategy of credit line management for credit card business

Adjusting the credit lines of card users is an important issue. It is essential to establish an optimized approach for credit card companies to identify the proper amount of credit to offer for their customers. Most of the related research concentrated on the prediction of credit card users׳ default. Our contribution is a consideration of a holistic and heuristic approach that looks at the credit line that maximizes the net profits of the credit card companies. We first apply regression models to find the probability of default of customer and customer׳s current balance as a function of credit line. Next we use a regression tree to identify groups of customers assigned with the same credit line. The results are then used to formulate the net profit and genetic algorithm is used to find optimally adjusted credit line for each group of customers. It is expected that our study can contribute to present strategic guidelines for the management of credit lines for card companies.     

Integrate software agents and CORBA in computational grid

This paper presents an Agent-based Computational Grid (ACG), which applies the concept of CORBA and agent to computational grid. The ACG system is used to implement a uniform higher level management of the computing resources and services on the Grid, and provide users with a consistent and transparent interface for accessing such services. In ACG grid, grid services are implemented by CORBA or by grid agent. Grid agents and CORBA objects will interact with each other to achieve user's service request. Our solution is the creation of a bridge between the CORBA and grid agents. The solution provides with the opportunity of considering an agent as a CORBA service and accessing CORBA services even from a grid agent. Thus, in AGC grid, existing legacy systems can be easily exploited as grid services. In this paper, firstly, the features of ACG grid are described, and then the design and implementation are given. Finally, some conclusions are given.     

一种面向服务的网格作业管理机制

开放网格服务体系结构(OGSA)的出现表明让网格资源以服务形式提供标准化的接口已成为趋势，然而目前的网格作业管理系统主要针对以程序形式提交的批处理类型作业，其管理的资源对象和调度目标主要面向科学计算，在基于服务的网格环境下远不能满足应用的需求：一方面，用户的使用模式从批处理为主转向带有交互性质的服务访问模式；另一方面，不同的应用对服务质量(QoS)有着不同级别的需求，为了解决这些问题，提出了一种面向服务的作业管理机制，它作为用户访问网格资源(服务)的代理，为用户提供透明的、与资源物理位置无关的并带有会话支持的作业服务接口。还引入了服务水平协议(SLA)的概念来表示用户需求的不同网格服务级别，作业管理系统则根据可定制的服务水平实现配置(SLAP)将sIA中规定的各项QoS特性映射到具体的作业管理行为，该作业管理机制已应用于织女星网格系统软件中，并能够为基于服务网格的应用提供灵活有效的支持。     

A SUPER‐AGENT‐BASED FRAMEWORK FOR REPUTATION MANAGEMENT AND COMMUNITY FORMATION IN DECENTRALIZED SYSTEMS

In this article, we propose a novel super‐agent‐based framework for reputation management and community formation in decentralized systems. We describe this framework in the context of Web service selection where agents with more capabilities act as super‐agents. These super‐agents serve as reputation managers to maintain reputation information of services and share the information with other consumer agents that have fewer capabilities than the super‐agents. In addition, super‐agents can maintain communities and build community‐based reputation for a service based on the opinions from all community members that have similar interests and judgement criteria as the super‐agents or the other community members. A practical reward mechanism is also introduced to create incentives for super‐agents to contribute their resources (to maintain reputation and form communities) and provide truthful reputation information. Experimental results obtained through simulation confirm that our approach achieves better effectiveness and scalability compared to the systems that do not use super‐agents and that do not form communities.     

MicroMAIS: executing and orchestrating Web services on constrained mobile devices

Mobile devices with their more and more powerful resources allow the development of mobile information systems in which services are not only provided by traditional systems but also autonomously executed and controlled in the mobile devices themselves. Services distributed on autonomous mobile devices allow both the development of cooperative applications without a back‐end infrastructure and the development of applications blending distributed and centralized services. In this paper, we propose MicroMAIS: an integrated platform for supporting the execution of Web service‐based applications natively on a mobile device. The MicroMAIS platform is composed of mAS and μ‐BPEL. The former allows the execution of a single Web service, whereas the latter permits the orchestration of several Web services according to the WS‐BPEL standard. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

语义Web及其应用

语言文Web是下一代Interuet的发展方向。语义Web的定义、分层结构进行了概述，详细总结和研究了语义Web在Web服务、P2P网络、知识管理、E-learning、智能信息检索和语义Web挖掘、网格计算等多个领域的应用。     

Computational intelligence tools for next generation quality of service management

In this paper we explore the interest of computational intelligence tools in the management of heterogeneous communication networks, specifically to predict congestion, failures and other anomalies in the network that may eventually lead to degradation of the quality of offered services. We show two different applications based on neural and neuro-fuzzy systems for quality of service (QoS) management in next generation networks for voice and video service over heterogeneous Internet protocol (V2oIP) services. The two examples explained in this paper attempt to predict the communication network resources for new incoming calls, and visualizing the QoS of a communication network by means of self-organizing maps.     

Trust-based group services selection in web-based service-oriented environments

Multi-agent technologies have been widely employed for the development of web-based systems, including web-based e-markets, web-based grid computing, e-governments and service-oriented software systems. In these service-oriented systems, service provider agents and service consumer agents are autonomous and rational entities, which can enter and leave the environments freely. For simplicity, we use terms ‘provider’ and ‘consumer’ to represent this two types of agents. How to select the most suitable service providers according to a service request from a consumer in such an open environment is a very challenging issue. In this paper, we propose an innovative trust model, called the GTrust model, for service group selection in general service-oriented environments. In the GTrust model, the trust evaluation for a service group is based on the functionality coverage of the group, the dependency relationships among individual services in the group, the ratings of individual services on the attributes of the service request and a similarity measurement of the extent to which reference reports can reflect the service request in terms of the priority distribution of attributes. The experimental results and analysis demonstrate the good performance of the GTrust model on the service group selection in service-oriented environments.     

基于分类服务的下一代互联网体系结构的实现

随着互联网应用的增长,目前提供尽力服务的互联网体系结构越来越不能满足这些新的服务要求。通过设计出一种新的路由器缓冲区管理策略,探讨一种基于分类服务的新一代互联网体系结构的实现方式。