Subject: CCPE Portal C546 From: Anand Natrajan Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2001 14:31:20 -0400 (EDT) To: gcf@indiana.edu X-UIDL: 7c6972e1a11d0000 X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 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 17:42:34 2001) X-From_: fox@mailer.csit.fsu.edu Sun Oct 14 17:41:36 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 C7FBE23A07 for ; Sun, 14 Oct 2001 17:41:35 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost by dirac.csit.fsu.edu (AIX4.2/UCB 8.7) id RAA17832; Sun, 14 Oct 2001 17:41:34 -0400 (EDT) Resent-Message-Id: <200110142141.RAA17832@dirac.csit.fsu.edu> Delivered-To: fox@csit.fsu.edu Received: from fins.uits.indiana.edu (unknown [129.79.6.185]) by mailer.csit.fsu.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5753823AC2 for ; Thu, 20 Sep 2001 14:32:40 -0400 (EDT) Received: from ares.cs.Virginia.EDU (ares.cs.Virginia.EDU [128.143.137.19]) by fins.uits.indiana.edu (8.10.1/8.10.1/IUPO) with ESMTP id f8KIV1o24090 for ; Thu, 20 Sep 2001 13:31:01 -0500 (EST) Received: from viper.cs.Virginia.EDU (viper.cs.Virginia.EDU [128.143.137.17]) by ares.cs.Virginia.EDU (8.9.2/8.9.2/UVACS-2000040300) with ESMTP id OAA02978 for ; Thu, 20 Sep 2001 14:31:00 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost (an4m@localhost) by viper.cs.Virginia.EDU (8.9.2/8.9.2) with ESMTP id OAA24581 for ; Thu, 20 Sep 2001 14:31:20 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: viper.cs.Virginia.EDU: an4m owned process doing -bs Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Resent-To: Geoffrey Fox Resent-Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2001 17:41:34 -0400 Resent-From: Geoffrey Fox CandC:PandE Referee Report Form *********************************************** Electronic Transimission to gcf@indiana.edu strongly preferred. Referees Home Page: http://aspen.csit.fsu.edu/CandCPandE/ Email gcf@indiana.edu for URL of full paper to be reviewed. WILEY Journal Home Page John Wiley and Sons, Ltd. Baffins Lane, Chichester West Sussex, PO19 1UD, England Telephone: (01243) 779777 Fax: (01243) 770379 REFEREE'S REPORT Concurrency and Computation:Practice and Experience ********** A: General Information Please return to: Geoffrey C. Fox Electronically Preferred gcf@indiana.edu Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience Computer Science Department 228 Lindley Hall Bloomington Indiana 47405 Office Phone 8128567977(Lab), 8128553788(CS) but best is cell phone 3152546387 FAX 8128567972 Please fill in Summary Conclusions (Sec. C) and details as appropriate in Secs. D, E and F. B: Refereeing Philosophy We encourage a broad range of readers and contributors. Please judge papers on their technical merit and separate comments on this from those on style and approach. Keep in mind the strong practical orientation that we are trying to give the journal. Note that the forms attached provide separate paper for comments that you wish only the editor to see and those that both the editor and author receive. Your identity will of course not be revealed to the author. C: Paper and Referee Metadata Paper Number C546: Date: Wed Sep 19 13:08:58 EDT 2001 Paper Title: MyPYTHIA: A Recommendation Portal fo Scientific Software and Services Author(s): E. Houstis, A. C. Catlin, N. Dhanjani, J. R. Rice, N. Ramakrishnan, V. Verykios Referee: Anand Natrajan Address: Dept. of Comp. Sc., Univ. of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904 Referee Recommendations. Please indicate overall recommendations here, and details in following sections. ACCEPTED PROVIDED CHANGES SUGGESTED ARE MADE D: Referee Comments (For Editor Only) ------------------------------------ This paper is a weak accept because I am not sure of the utility of the work. I understand the technical details the authors have presented, but I'd like to see more. It seems like their work would be useful to the scientific community, but I don't have the evidence that scientists would actually use such a database. The writing needs a few minor changes, as indicated in the Presentation Changes section. E: Referee Comments (For Author and Editor) ------------------------------ This paper describes a recommendation service for scientific systems. Scientists can now invoke this system to find out the resources and problem size that can give them the results they desire on the grid. Creating and maintaining such a database is a useful effort. However, I am not convinced that the grid community right now is mature enough to use such a database. Typically, most users feel that their problem formulation is unique; in many research cases, that notion is true. It's not clear whether the run-time details of other users, even if they ran the same problem, matter to current users. Besides, the entires in the MyPYTHIA database transfer to other users only if the current and previous users happen to have access to the same set of resources. The paper is weak on some of the interesting technical details. For example, Section 3.3, which I would have thought would have been the meat of the paper, reads like a survey. How are the various algorithms implemented in MyPYTHIA? Do users select from them? Are hybrids of the algorithms used? All of them? Some of them? Are there benefits to using one over the other? I expected this section to convince me that a MyPYTHIA databases can help users share their run-time experiences. In contrast, Sections 3.1 and 3.5 don't deserve the detailed treatment given to them. Most readers understand retrieval systems and user interface components. A word to the wise is sufficient. A concern I have about this work is the accumulation of data about scientific runs. Do we have any justification that users or even domain experts will enter copious amounts of data about their runs in some database or the other? In summary, I think the concept is good, although perhaps a bit ahead of its time. I'd like to see more technical detail about how decision systems are invoked and recommendations made, and less detail about database organisation and user interfaces. F: Presentation Changes The writing in the paper is pretty good. I'd suggest a few small changes. * Some parts of the paper read very much like they were written by different authors. For example, "a priori" is spelt or typeset differently in three places. Ditto for "PROGOL". Also, the conventions for quoted text are different in different places. * Some terms are used without definition. For example, see Section 2. We have no definition for U and R. * Remove spelling errors. For example, "quarantee", "maintaing". * Remove grammatical errors. For example, "outside of" is bad usage unless "outside" is used as a noun (in which case it is preceded by "the"). Remove unbound or ambiguous referents such as "this" not preceded by a noun. * Citations are not first-class words. In other words, don't say "See [1] for Einstein's Theory of Relativity", or "Einstein presents a theory in [1]". Instead, to say "Einstein presents the Theory of Relativity [1]". .