Subject: Re: Referee Reports on C541 for GCE Special Issue of CCPE From: Naren Ramakrishnan Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2001 17:47:12 -0500 (EST) To: gcf@indiana.edu CC: ribbens@cs.vt.edu, ltw@cs.vt.edu, shaffer@cs.vt.edu, kafura@cs.vt.edu Dear Dr. Fox, > > I would like to receive your revised paper by the end > of November. Please return to me by EMAIL We have revised our paper according to the reviews. The PDF version can be obtained from: http://vtopus.cs.vt.edu/~ramakris/papers/vt-gridce.pdf (the file was too big to send by email). I am also enclosing a text file summarizing our revisions and also responses to individual referee comments. We look forward to any comments or suggestions you might have. Thanks and Best, Naren Revision of paper "Programming Environments for Multidisciplinary Grid Communities" submitted to special issue of C&C:P&E on GCEs General comments: ------------------ - Most of the comments and suggestions by the reviewers have been taken into account. The authors appreciate the careful and thorough reviews. They have helped to improve the presentation considerably. - One of the reviewers suggested that Section 2 (which describes 5 PSEs) be condensed significantly whereas another reviewer appreciated the detailed descriptions. We would like to retain these sections in the revised paper, since they help to set the context for the particular technical contributions we have made. Since the guest editor Dr. Fox indicated that length is not too critical an aspect, we request that this section be allowed to remain in the paper. - The text has been carefully rewritten in several places to be more concise, while at the same time providing enough details to allow the details of implementation to come through. This is especially the case in the parts of Section 3 dealing with the Symphony system. Specific comments and responses: -------------------------------- Referee 1: ---------- > References need to be ordered. We have now used the standard reference style for the C&C:P&E journal. > The abstract could be "abstracted-up" one level. It currently reads more > like an outline or roadmap than expected. This has been done. The abstract now summarizes the key ideas of the paper. > The first sentence of the abstract asserts the maturity of > grid computing. This is not an easily accepted statement. > In the opening of the introduction, a shift from lower level application > scheduling and execution to higher level problem solving is asserted. > Its very debatable whether this is happening yet. The reference to "The > Grid" book makes it even less convincing since it was published in 1998 and > the early work to develop infrastructure was just starting. Also, the > paper is really about early research into supporting higher level problem > solving so it seems to contradict this statement. We have rephrased these sentences to signify the increasing emphasis on support for high-level problem solving instead of the "maturity" of grid computing. In fact, the very theme of the special issue implies that such an emphasis is being felt! The citation to the grid book was really to emphasize the earlier stages of the Grid, i.e., application scheduling and execution. > Section 3.1 last sentence - this is a strong statement without any > references. It's not clear what the "traditional approaches" are. This has been clarified to signify that "traditional approaches" mean traditional approaches of representation. Further into this section, several specific citations are made. > Section 3.1, third to last paragraph. "The modeling and performance > requirements in a multidisciplinary GCE mean that both approaches are too > restrictive." Again a strong statement. Is this proved? This follows from our earlier described scenarios. Current approaches concentrate on executing single runs (performance) whereas our scenarios describe facilities that involve sophistication in modeling (i.e., more than one run). Similarly, the approaches that do permit sophisticated modeling (AI projects such as QSIM) are not meant to be used in a computational science environment, such as a Grid. > Perhaps this is because the paragraph contains too many references for > the first category. I would suggest that the approach used for the > second category (i.e. just reference numbers) would be sufficient and > allow the main point to come through. This is a good suggestion and has been incorporated. > Figure 12 and the couple sentences referring to it could be left out. At > this point in the paper, domain specific content confuses the discussion. We have now removed Figure 12. > Forward and backward references (e.g. See section xxx) didn't help and > were distracting. I suggest they be removed. Organize content or > rephrase so they are not necessary. We have reorganized the sentences so that this is not necessary. > Last two paragraphs of the discussion are hard to read and don't add to the > paper. Are discussions of future work appropriate for a journal article? > I suggest they be removed. We believe that these are pertinent as this is a journal that focuses on practice and experience, and our work is very much a major project in progress. The future work section describes the directions in which the current research can be extended. Referee 2: ---------- > However, the format conversion described however is not clear. In the > first sentence of the > section "Format Conversion and Chain Management" the authors write "one > of the benefits of > semi structured data representations is automatic format conversion" but > they do not > elaborate more on it. Unfortunately, only a brief overview of the nature of changes involved in format conversions could be given. We have provided a citation to ours and other papers to describe how format conversion in XML notation is effected. Reference no. 78, which is cited, gives examples on how format conversion is effected in the semistructured notation. > Sieve and Symphony are the most interesting contributions of the paper - > however the paper > only presents an overall picture leaving unanswered questions. For e.g. > how does Sieve know > about the data sources? How do the users enter the collaboration mode? The Sieve section has been updated to include these aspects. > In Symphony the > present experiments are done "based on a specially created server" - no > more details are > provided on these experiments. How does the user know where the failure > occurred in a > simulation - there seem to be no concept of logs for a simulation? A > little more detail in > these subsections will help reader understanding the PSE framework better. The Symphony section has now been considerably extended (it is now 3 pages) to cover these and more aspects. We thank the reviewer for suggesting that we clarify these aspects. > Presentation Changes > Figure 13 is not very clear. A sharper image will definitely make it > clearer and easier for > the reader to understand. The figures have been redone and are clearer. > There are some typos - for e.g. Section 2.2, > second paragraph has "planform" instead of platform. The correct word in aircraft design is indeed "planform," not platform. Referee 3: ---------- > The only serious concern that I have is the length of the paper, which > is currently 32 pages or, excluding references and the table of > contents (sic!), 23 full pages of text and figures. And the paper > doesn't currently use the right style for typesetting. Once it's > converted it will probably be more like 40 pages. While there were > no page limits in the call for papers, I do think this is a bit much. We have shortened various sections of the paper and removed figures. This causes the combined length (including references) to be just over 34. > This is actually not very relevant, but section 1.3 (GCEs for > Multidisciplinary Grid Communities: Characteristics) mentions "gcc > 2.0.8". There was never such a version. See > http://gcc.gnu.org/releases.html We thank the reviewer for this very careful observation. The example has been corrected to use a valid version number. > The quality of most of the figures generated from bitmaps (3, 4, 5, > 13) is definitely unsatisfactory: they are so blurred that it's hardly > possible to see anything. All the figures have been redone for clarity.