Subject: Re: Request to review a paper C523: Towards a Common Development Framework for Distributed Applications From: Michael Philippsen Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2001 08:15:54 +0200 To: fox@csit.fsu.edu X-UIDL: 560428ae20190000 X-Mozilla-Status: 0011 X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 Received: by mailer.csit.fsu.edu (mbox gcfpc) (with Cubic Circle's cucipop (v1.31 1998/05/13) Sun Oct 14 21:55:50 2001) X-From_: fox@mailer.csit.fsu.edu Sun Oct 14 21:50:11 2001 Return-Path: Delivered-To: gcfpc@csit.fsu.edu Received: from dirac.csit.fsu.edu (dirac.csit.fsu.edu [144.174.128.44]) by mailer.csit.fsu.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8DAFD23A05 for ; Sun, 14 Oct 2001 21:50:11 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost by dirac.csit.fsu.edu (AIX4.2/UCB 8.7) id VAA52616; Sun, 14 Oct 2001 21:50:10 -0400 (EDT) Resent-Message-Id: <200110150150.VAA52616@dirac.csit.fsu.edu> Replied: Fri, 28 Sep 2001 07:22:07 -0400 Replied: Michael Philippsen Delivered-To: fox@csit.fsu.edu Received: from relay.xlink.net (relay.xlink.net [193.141.40.4]) by mailer.csit.fsu.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4E53A23A0C for ; Fri, 28 Sep 2001 02:17:21 -0400 (EDT) Received: from gate.fzi.de (gate.fzi.de [141.21.4.3]) by relay.xlink.net (8.9.3/8.8.7) with ESMTP id IAA16573 for ; Fri, 28 Sep 2001 08:17:19 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from thor (actually thor.fzi.de) by gate.fzi.de (PP) with ESMTP; Fri, 28 Sep 2001 08:17:18 +0200 Received: from fzi.de (actually mauchly) by thor (PP) with ESMTP; Fri, 28 Sep 2001 08:17:12 +0200 Sender: phlipp@fzi.de Message-ID: <3BB4159A.1A22AD61@fzi.de> X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.76 [en] (X11; U; SunOS 5.8 sun4u) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <3B8458EB.1080903@csit.fsu.edu> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Resent-To: Geoffrey Fox Resent-Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2001 21:50:10 -0400 Resent-From: Geoffrey Fox Hi Geoffrey, here is my review. Regards, *Michael. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Title: Towards a Common Application Framework for Distributed Applications Author: F.A. Rabhi Recommendation: REJECT This paper claims to present a common application framework for distributed applications. I agree with the author that such a framework is overdue and that it is about time to combine results from different research areas into a common development framework. Unfortunately, the paper only presents the state of the art in different research areas without fulfilling its own claims. In the end, the reader is disappointed because there is no common application framework presented in the paper. At least I haven't found it. Since the paper does not hold its promises, it should not be accepted for publication. The only novel idea is the use of the waterfall model for distributed applications. This however needs to be debated carefully. The waterfall model is based on the fact that there is a common hardware abstraction layer so that platform specific questions can be ignored during the design phase. Current parallel and distributed platforms are very diverse (shared verses distributed memory, nearest-neighbor versus switched versus broadcast network, SIMD verses MIMD design) Unfortunately, these aspects typically need to be taken into account during the design phase of high-performance applications since otherwise sufficient performance cannot be achieved at all. The waterfall model seems not to be appropriate for high-performance applications, i.e., for one of the four problem areas mentioned on the first page. The remaining question is whether the survey sections (2-6) are interesting or promising enough. If they were, it might make sense to ask the author to retarget the article and to turn it into a survey (that does not claim to provide technical news.) However, I regard the survey sections to be far from excellent as well. Most of the survey sections are enumerations of approaches or lines of research. If the reader already knows the approaches, there is nothing to gain from the article, because the descriptions are very high-level, i.e., superficial. If the reader does not know the approaches, the descriptions are too high-level to give a sufficient idea. The survey chapters do not provide any classifications of the approaches that would empower the reader to structure or (re-)organize his own knowledge of the field. There aren't any comparisons either, that would allow the reader to better understand advantages or disadvantages of the approaches presented. Finally, the author does not discuss which of the approaches are successfully used in the industry (or in the applied research) today. Hence, there is not much to learn from the survey chapters. In conclusion, the subsections in the survey chapters are just list of facts, systems, and properties without any guiding structure. They do not deliver what I expect from a good survey. (The author seems to be a skeleton expert. This particular subsection is *much* more detailed than others. This fact gives the impression that the author does not have a very deep understanding of the other areas. This impression reduces the credibility of the whole text.) The paper has a rather long appendix. In this appendix, the author presents how various tools can be used in a case study. Unfortunately, this appendix is not tightly coupled to the article. The article does not gain a lot from the appendix. On the other hand, the appendix does not show the results of the article applied to practice. So what's the reason for having such a lengthy appendix? To summarize, the paper does not live up to its title and its abstract. Most of the chapters feel like chapters of a survey but do not help the reader in getting an understanding of the field, nor do they provide a new classification or comparison. Hence, the paper is neither a technical contribution to the field nor a valuable survey article. Therefore, I recommend to REJECT the paper. If the editor's decision is to accept the paper (or to accept it after major changes) I'm happy to provide a list of detailed comments on grammar, on individual paragraphs, on the list of references, ... .