WE-AMBLE: a Workflow Engine To Manage Awareness in Collaborative Grid Environments

Abstract

Grid computing shares heterogeneous resources in dynamic service-based environments. This kind of system has the major advantage of enabling rapid composition of distributed applications. However, equilibrating the amount of work assigned to each of the nodes in a grid environment is a complex problem, even more so than for other kinds of parallel systems. In this paper, we present a new extension and reinterpretation of one of the most successful models of awareness in Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), called the Spatial Model of Interaction (SMI), which manages awareness of interaction through a set of key concepts, to manage task delivery in collaborative distributed systems. This model, called AMBLE (Awareness Model for Balancing the Load in Collaborative Grid Environments), also applies some theoretical principles and theories of multi-agent systems to create a collaborative and cooperative environment that provides autonomous, efficient and independent management of resources available in a grid environment. WE-AMBLE, a Workflow Engine to manage awareness in collaborative grid environments through the AMBLE concepts, provides a workflow engine to manage different levels of awareness, allowing different virtual organizations to share computational resources based on open protocols and interfaces.