ECOO Environments for COOperation Inria Lorraine

Objectives Coordination of a virtual team (people distributed in time, space and organizations, with a common objective) –Flexible and reliable process management –Replica management with operational transformations –Group Awareness

Composition of the team academic people (C. Godart (head), P. Molli (vice-head), K. Benali, N. Boudjlida, G. Canals, F. Charoy, P. Molli, O. Perrin, H. Skaf, P. Urso)(J.C. Derniame) 5+7 Phd Students (K. Baina, J. Bitcheva, C. Bouthier, D. Grigori, S. Tata)(S. Alshattnawi, D. Cheng, W. Gaaloul, K. Gaaloul, A. Guabtni, M. Rouached, U. Yildiz) 2 post-doctoral fellow (S. Bhiri, G. Oster) 5+1 engineers (G. Bort, R. Chabald, S. Jourdain, M. Patten, M. Valdes Faura)(F. Jouille)

Plan Results –Flexible and reliable process management Flexible process (Highlight 1: the Bonita WfMS) Reliable process (Highlight 2: Service composition with transactional guarantees) –Operational transformations Safe and generic transformation (Highlight 3: the Vote proof system) From synchronous to asynchronous work (Highlight 4: the LibreSource environment) –Group awareness Perspectives –Process engineering –Collaborative editing

Process management topics Flexible processes –How to better support the subtlety of human interactions than traditional workflow systems do ? –Highlight 1: Bonita, a flexible a WfMSBonita Reliable processes –How to provide (transactional) guarantees for long term, with proper internal control, semi-atomic, with user defined correctness … activities ? … in SOA architecture ! –Highlight 2: Service composition with transactional guaranteesService composition

Operational transformations OT framework allows anyone to edit anytime any kind of data without locking, turn taking or serializing Shared data are replicated. Local operations are broadcasted to others sites to be re-executed after transformation The system is correct if it eventually converge towards a common state that ensures intentions of users Intention are represented as constraints

OT: topics Safe and generic synchronization –It appears to be very difficult to write safe OT –Highlight 3: Tombstone Transformation Functions (TTF)TTF From synchronous to asynchronous work –Configuration management system based on OT technology: you no longer check-out, update, commit file versions, but logs of operations –Highlight 4: implemented in So6, a safe and generic synchronizer, heart of LibreSource, [Group03]LibreSource

Group Awareness If people receive the right information at the right time, they communicate and coordinate Large sets of shared artefacts, large groups of participants, complex organizational structures: many different collaborative situations; loosely coupled groups Topics –Awareness visualization –Context-based awareness adaptation

Perspectives Process Engineering Cooperative processes, Composition of services with properties, Process discovery, Decentralized control, Process awareness Collaborative editing Peer-to-peer editors, Beyond linear structures, Massive collaborative editing (process, awareness) Keyword: decentralized control and organization

Process engineering (1) Composition of services with properties –Questions: How to abstract a process ? Which properties? How to abstract them ? How to compose process fragments ? How the semantic Web can help ? –Application: Many, Service Oriented Architecture … –Context: in the vein of work on Trans. Com. Ser., ARA Cops (Composition of Policies and Services), Regional Cows (Constraint reasoning for the safe composition of WS), French WG « Web Services »

Process engineering (2) Process discovery –Objectives: control flow discovery, properties discovery –Applications: process discovery, process group enactment, trust (when I expose some knowledge, what can be mined concerning my know–how ?) … –Context: in the vein of initial results (control flow discovery, transactional properties discovery), cooperation with TU Eindhoven (Web process discovery) Distributed control –Objective: More distributed control! how to do? Process delegation, the role of process patterns, the role of trust –Application: towards peer-to-peer processes, trust (When I delegate an “activity”, how can I trust my supplier ?) … –Context: in the vein of work on Trans. Com. Ser.

Collaborative editing (1) Peer-to peer editors –Objectives: OT approach is decentralized but designed for closed network, need for new algorithms that tolerate the churn of peer-to-peer network –Applications: P2P group text editor such as a P2P Wiki –Context: the Woot approach (designed for linear structures, based on a monotonic linearization function of partial orders, does not require vector clocks nor site number knowledge), ARC Recall Collaborative editing, beyond linear structures

Collaborative editing (2) Massive collaborative editing –Objectives: collaborative editing community always handles small groups of users (2- 50)..., what about tens or hundreds of users? Need to imagine new consistency management, processes and awareness –Application: e-learning environment, Wikipedia –Context: ARC Recall

Questions ?

1 Flexible cooperative workflow management system –Flexible execution of activities –Dynamic process definition –Web services ready Built on the Jonas ObjectWeb J2EE Application Server Proposed by Bull in their Open Source Software Solution "Open Service"

Composition of services with … How to ensure correct reliable executions ? (application dependent, user defined, easy to do) Reliability choices Composed service Registry of services Designers Define correctness: Accepted Termination States: the configurations of terminal states (completed, compensated, aborted …) in which designers accept the activities of a process to terminate Extend service description with simple properties : retriable, compensatable, pivot Extend TCS with dependencies : compensation, alternative … 2 Using the provided information, either we validate the model or we provide hints for correction

Tombstone Transformational Functions Writing a set of Operational Transformation is difficult. –C1: op1.T(op2,op1)≡op2.T(op2,op1) –C2: T(op3,op1.T(op2,op1))=T(op3,op2.T(op1,op2)) All existing OT were false ! The TTF transformation functions are proved safe ! Key of success: the VOTE environment that automatically and quickly proves that a set of OT verifies correctness conditions [TCS06]VOTE

Begin SPIKE Automated Proof Formal Specification & C1 - C2 & Properties (SPIKE) Formal Specification & Properties (VOTE) Translation & Completness Scenario Extraction Incremental Verification End [Failure] Correctness of a set of OT 3

3