EnsemBlue

Paper: EnsemBlue: Integrating Distributed Storage and Consumer Electronics

Liked:
• Idea of using cache consistency based persistence queries as an event notification mechanism because it reuses existing file system protocols. This fall in synchronization with Lampson’s hints of “Using a good idea again”. Also EnsemBlue customizes behavior of every client which helps it in dealing with heterogeneity.
• Concept of EnsemBlue makes computing pervasive by pushing computation to distributed system and making computers disappear in background.
• Use of general purpose computers to provide extensibility to closed-platform CED’s and avoiding kernel modification helps in usability of this system. Use of common distributed namespace and receipt based mapping of this to local name space helps in making communication mechanism between various devices generic.
• Continued operations in state of disconnection and idempotent event processing makes EnsemBlue robust to crash scenarios.

Disliked:
• Making queries persistent may lead to accumulation of long unused query in the system. Also updating persistence queries can lead to serialization delays.
• Though case study shows the programmatic feasibility of this system but cost is no where mentioned.

Comments:
• As system is targeted for small number of users only hence scalability is not a issue but upto what extent this idea can reduce computational burden from end-device?


details will be provided later...