Enabling Transparent Data Sharing in Component Models

Abstract

Abstract:The fast growth of high-bandwidth wide-area networks has encouraged the development of computational grids. To deal with the increasing complexity of grid applications, the software component technology seems very appealing since it emphasizes software composition and re-use. However, current software component models only support explicit data transfers between components through remote procedure call (RPC), remote method invocation (RMI) or event based ports. The distributed shared memory paradigm has demonstrated its utility by enabling a transparent access to data via a globally shared data space. Data localization, replication and transfer as well as synchronization of concurrent accesses are delegated to an external data-sharing service. This paper proposes to extend software component models with shared memory capabilities: a) a transparent access to shared data, and b) the possibility to use shared data as parameters of operations provided by component ports. The proposed model is instantiated as an extension of the CORBA Component Model (CCM) and the Common Component Architecture (CCA), using the transparent data access model provided by the JUXMEM grid data-sharing service. Key

Combining data sharing with the master–worker paradigm in the common component architecture

“…In a previous work [7], we proposed an approach to allow transparent data sharing in component models. The idea is to logically attach the shared data to a component.…”

“…JUXMEM was in particular used to share data between components located on distinct clusters. An application example using data ports can be found in [7].…”

“…Advanced framework may dynamically decide of the data sharing mechanism to be used depending on their availability and the localization of components. In [7], we show that the interface with respect to the framework may be generic and contains operations like data allocation and freeing, reading, writing and synchronization.…”

“…Operations like connect, getPort and operations related to introspection interests are also concerned by these changes. With the experience gained with the implementation of data ports performed in CCM [7], theses modifications seem to be limited and mostly straightforward to implement.…”

“…However, component models need to be adapted for addressing high performance independently of the resource infrastructure. In previous work, we have addressed several shortcomings of these models: encapsulation of a parallel code into a component [25], support for the master-worker programming paradigm [11], and support for data sharing among components [7].…”