III-COR; Dynamic Meta-Compilation in Networked Information Systems

无线网络和廉价的传感器正在引领着一个地理上分布丰富的数据源的世界。正在设计各种大规模联网的系统来管理这些信息。这类系统通常包含两个关键的体系结构组件：连接系统中参与节点的软件“网络”和跨节点运行的查询引擎。对于如何共同设计这些组件以实现高效、可靠的解决方案，几乎没有达成一致意见。然而，最近关于声明式网络的研究表明，这两个层都可以自然地用高级语言实现，在高级语言中，程序员指定希望得到什么结果，而不是指定如何实现结果。该项目开发了“动态元编译”，以实现此类系统的网络和查询组件的自动协同优化。在该框架中，用于网络信息系统的优化编译器是从用正在被优化的完全相同的声明性分布式语言编写的优化规则中引导的。这样的计划将为这类新系统带来非凡的软件工程方面的便利。这项工作的成果可以显著加快新一代系统的开发，以利用一个大规模网络和数据丰富的世界的潜力，并对环境监测、公共卫生、灾害应对和计算机系统管理等广泛的应用程序产生影响。项目资金支持两名研究生的培训和研究，目前正在计划在课程中使用该软件。这项研究的出版物、技术报告、软件和实验数据将通过项目网站(http：//p2.cs.berkeley.edu)分发。

Wireless networks and inexpensive sensors are leading to a world rich in geographically distributed sources of data. Various massively networked systems are being designed to manage this information. Such systems typically contain two key architectural components: a software "network" connecting the participating nodes in the system, and a query engine running across the nodes. There is little consensus on how to co-engineer these components to achieve an efficient, robust solution. However, recent work on Declarative Networking showed that both these layers can be naturally implemented in a high-level language, in which the programmer specifies "what" result is desired, not "how" it is to be achieved.This project develops "Dynamic Metacompilation" to enable automatic co-optimization of the network and query components of such systems. In this framework, the optimizing compiler for a networked information system is bootstrapped from optimization rules written in the very same declarative, distributed language that is being optimized. Such a scheme will bring remarkable ease of software engineering for this new class of systems.The results of the work can significantly accelerate the development of a new generation of systems to harness the potential of a massively networked and data-rich world, with implications for a broad range of applications including environmental monitoring, public health, disaster response, and computer system management. Project funds support the training and research of two graduate students, and plans are underway for use of the software in coursework. Publications, technical reports, software and experimental data from this research will be disseminated via the project web site (http:// p2.cs.berkeley.edu).