Abstract

Various issues related to social security information exchanges between different countries are analyzed and the European Union solution, named Eessi project (Electronic Exchange of Social Security), is described. One of the key components of Eessi is the so-called Master directory, which manages information about institutions participating in information exchange, business processes concerning every institution and information flow associated to electronic documents. The application of a similar solution for countries in other regions taking into account advantages and disadvantages is discussed.

Abstract

Technological renewal in audio-visual production, thanks to digitalization, is replacing analog images with data files. The new model proposed by Telecinco (Spain’s TV Channel 5) is based on bringing the technology closer to the user, providing maximum flexibility in information access and information sharing, and creating a multifunctional personal environment. Information is shared without moving it from TV5’s repositories.

Abstract

During the last three decades, aircraft cockpits have been highly automated and incrementally digitized to the point that we now talk about “interactive cockpits”, not because pilots interact with the mechanical part of the aircraft directly, but because they use a pointing device to interact with computer screens. More generally, computers invaded the airspace ranging from onboard aircraft to air traffic control (ATC) ground services. In terms of workflow, the elimination of the flight-engineer onboard commercial aircraft cockpits drastically transformed the way pilots fly—this was done in the beginning of the 1980s. Pilot’s activity shifted from manual control to cognitive management of embedded systems (performing some of the tasks the flight engineer used to do). Aircraft automation considerably improved commercial aviation safety. Today, main issues come from the exponential increase of the number of aircraft in the sky. Air traffic complexity imposes drastic reengineering of air traffic workflow. ATC is shifting towards air traffic management (ATM). Same thing: moving from control to management, expanding cockpit’s single agent problems and solutions to air traffic multi-agent problems and solutions. The main emphasis is therefore social cognition. During the twentieth century, we automated physical systems—we now talk about cyber-physical systems (i.e., we shifted from hardware mechanical engineering issues to software cognitive problems). During the beginning of the twenty-first century, almost all systems are first ideated and designed as pieces of software, and they are transformed into tangible things. Consequently, workflow can be modeled and simulated very early during the design process and, unlike during the twentieth century, functions and therefore activities can be tested before anything is physically built. This provides great possibilities that should be operationalized and implemented. This chapter will show that the main issue has become tangibility, instead of automation. At the same time, these new possibilities provided by our emerging digital world enable a brand-new move towards more autonomous systems that need to be coordinated. We will illustrate this shift from automation towards autonomy, by providing salient examples and generic patterns of this evolution of workflow in the aviation domain. Document type: Part of book or chapter of book

Abstract

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-54420-0_31 A large up-to-date compendium of integrated genomic data is often required for biological data analysis. The compendium can be tens of terabytes in size, and must often be frequently updated with new experimental or meta-data. Manual compendium update is cumbersome, requires a lot of unnecessary computation, and it may result in errors or inconsistencies in the compendium. We propose a transparent file based approach for adding incremental update ca-pabilities to unmodified genomics data analysis tools and pipeline workflow managers. This approach is implemented in the GeStore system. We evaluate GeStore using a real world genomics compendium. Our results show that it is easy to add incremental updates to genomics data processing pipelines, and that incremental updates can reduce the computation time such that it becomes prac-tical to maintain large-scale up-to-date genomics compendia on small clusters. Document type: Part of book or chapter of book

Abstract

Conducting experiments and documenting results is daily business of scientists. Good and traceable documentation enables other scientists to confirm procedures and results for increased credibility. Documentation and scientific conduct are regulated and termed as "good laboratory practice." Laboratory notebooks are used to record each step in conducting an experiment and processing data. Originally, these notebooks were paper based. Due to computerised research systems, acquired data became more elaborate, thus increasing the need for electronic notebooks with data storage, computational features and reliable electronic documentation. As a new approach to this, a scientific data management system (DataFinder) is enhanced with features for traceable documentation. Provenance recording is used to meet requirements of traceability, and this information can later be queried for further analysis. DataFinder has further important features for scientific documentation: It employs a heterogeneous and distributed data storage concept. This enables access to different types of data storage systems (e. g. Grid data infrastructure, file servers). In this chapter we describe a number of building blocks that are available or close to finished development. These components are intended for assembling an electronic laboratory notebook for use in Grid environments, while retaining maximal flexibility on usage scenarios as well as maximal compatibility overlap towards each other. Through the usage of such a system, provenance can successfully be used to trace the scientific workflow of preparation, execution, evaluation, interpretation and archiving of research data. The reliability of research results increases and the research process remains transparent to remote research partners. Document type: Part of book or chapter of book

Abstract

International audience; Mapping applications onto parallel platforms is a challenging problem, even for simple application patterns such as pipeline or fork graphs. Several antagonist criteria should be optimized for workflow applications, such as throughput and latency (or a combination). In this paper, we consider a simplified model with no communication cost, and we provide an exhaustive list of complexity results for different problem instances. Pipeline or fork stages can be replicated in order to increase the throughput by sending consecutive data sets onto different processors. In some cases, stages can also be data-parallelized, i.e. the computation of one single data set is shared between several processors. This leads to a decrease of the latency and an increase of the throughput. Some instances of this simple model are shown to be NP-hard, thereby exposing the inherent complexity of the mapping problem. We provide polynomial algorithms for other problem instances. Altogether, we provide solid theoretical foundations for the study of mono-criterion or bi-criteria mapping optimization problems. Document type: Report

Abstract

Mapping workflow applications onto parallel platforms is a challenging problem, even for simple application patterns such as pipeline graphs. Several antagonist criteria should be optimized, such as throughput and latency (or a combination). In this paper, we study the complexity of the bi-criteria mapping problem for pipeline graphs on communication homogeneous platforms. In particular, we assess the complexity of the well-known chains-to-chains problem for different-speed processors, which turns out to be NP-hard. We provide several efficient polynomial bi-criteria heuristics, and their relative performance is evaluated through extensive simulations.; L’ordonnancement et l’allocation des workflows sur plates-formes parallèles est un problème crucial, même pour des applications simples comme des graphes en pipeline. Plusieurs critères contradictoires doivent être optimisés, tels que le débit et la latence (ou une combinaison des deux). Dans ce rapport, nous étudions la complexité du problème de l’ordonnancement bi-critère pour les graphes pipelinés sur des plate-formes avec communications homogènes. En particulier nous évaluons la complexité du problème bien connu ”chains-on-chains” pour les processeurs hétérogènes, un problème qui s’avère NP-difficile. Nous proposons plusieurs heuristiques bi-critères efficaces en temps polynomial. Leur performance relative est évaluée par des simulations intensives. Document type: Report

Abstract

The visualization of large, remotely located data sets necessitates the development of a distributed computing pipeline in order to reduce the data, in stages, to a manageable size. The required baseline infrastructure for launching such a distributed pipeline is becoming available, but few services support even marginally optimal resource selection and partitioning of the data analysis workflow. We explore a methodology for building a model of overall application performance using a composition of the analytic models of individual components that comprise the pipeline. The analytic models are shown to be accurate on a testbed of distributed heterogeneous systems. The prediction methodology will form the foundation of a more robust resource management service for future Grid-based visualization applications. Document type: Report