Title: Self-adaptive approximate queries for large-scale information aggregation

Authors: René Brunner; Felix Freitag; Leandro Navarro; Omer F. Rana

Addresses: Computer Architecture Department, Technical University of Catalonia, C. Jordi Girona, 1-3, 08034 Barcelona, Spain. ' Computer Architecture Department, Technical University of Catalonia, C. Jordi Girona, 1-3, 08034 Barcelona, Spain. ' Computer Architecture Department, Technical University of Catalonia, C. Jordi Girona, 1-3, 08034 Barcelona, Spain. ' Computer Science & Informatics, Cardiff University, 5 The Parade, Cardiff CF24 3AA, UK

Abstract: Self-adaptation enables distributed software to modify its behaviour based on changes in the operating environment. In large-scale information systems for cloud computing that use hierarchical data aggregation, self-adaption may be used to respond to an approximate query, thereby reducing use of network bandwidth and retrieval time. We present a novel algorithm that uses an Analytic Hierarchical Process (AHP) in order to apply self-adaption to approximate queries based on network-awareness. The AHP-based algorithm provides a trade-off among network usage, retrieval time and the accuracy of the retrieved results. Simulations show that the number of needed messages reduces with AHP to a constant upper bound. The retrieval time reduces to a constant factor under an increasing number of nodes. Our results demonstrate that the algorithm is able to provide responses with the required accuracy, primarily by adapting the depth of the query based on the number of messages and the network conditions.

Keywords: cloud computing; information retrieval; information aggregation; approximate queries; large-scale networks; self-adaptive queries; distributed software; distributed computing; self-adaptation; network bandwidth; retrieval time; simulation; analytical hierarchical process; AHP.

DOI: 10.1504/IJWGS.2012.049168

International Journal of Web and Grid Services, 2012 Vol.8 No.3, pp.225 - 247

Published online: 31 Dec 2014 *

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