New.

Geoffrey Challen
1 parent e9c9a29b
Showing 4 changed files with 86 additions and 5 deletions
discussion.tex
maybe.tex
references.bib
related.tex
@@ -34,9 +34,19 @@ is reduced.
 However, the \texttt{maybe} statement represents a fundamentally different
 approach from previously attempts to enable runtime adaptation that relied on
-libraries. First, libraries
+libraries. As a code organization stategy, the benefits that libraries provide
+in terms of reduced duplication and more powerful interfaces are orthogonal and
+complementary to the \texttt{maybe} statement. That said, a large amount of
+code including adaptation logic remains app specific and cannot be refactored
+into a library.
-Finally, note that structured uncertainty is not randomness. The
-\texttt{maybe} statement indicates that during any given execution one
-alternative may be better than the others---even if the developer or system
-are not sure which alternative to use.
+More importantly, library development still requires development-time
+certainty. Despite the fact that library developers are more likely to be
+experts at the type of adaptation the library performs, we still believe that
+even the most skilled programmers are not capable of anticipating all
+possible sources of uncertainty and will benefit from being able to express
+structured uncertainty. \texttt{maybe} allows all developers---including both
+app and library writers---to shed the burden of producing a single certain
+approach and instead write uncertain code containing the flexibility needed
+required to enable powerful data-driven approaches to post-deployment
+adaptation.
@@ -82,3 +82,9 @@ maintained across multiple code blocks. As we gain more experience with our
 rewrite-based prototype, described next in Section~\ref{sec-certainty}, we
 will revisit the question of nesting in future compiler-driven \texttt{maybe}
 systems.
+
+As a final remark, note that structured uncertainty is not randomness.
+Randomness weights multiple options statically---there is no right or wrong
+choice. In contrast, the \texttt{maybe} statement indicates that during any
+given execution one alternative may be the right choice---even if the
+developer or system cannot yet identify it.
@@ -2,6 +2,44 @@
 @string{sosp = "SOSP"}
 @string{osdi = "OSDI"}
+@article{badrinath2000conceptual,
+ title={A conceptual framework for network and client adaptation},
+ author={Badrinath, B and Fox, Armando and Kleinrock, Leonard and Popek, Gerald and Reiher, Peter and Satyanarayanan, Mahadev},
+ journal={Mobile Networks and Applications},
+ volume={5},
+ number={4},
+ pages={221--231},
+ year={2000},
+ publisher={Springer-Verlag New York, Inc.}
+}
+
+@inproceedings{odyssey-sosp97,
+	Address = {Saint Malo, France},
+	Author = {Brian D. Noble and M. Satyanarayanan and Dushyanth Narayanan and James Eric Tilton and Jason Flinn and Kevin R. Walker},
+	Booktitle = {SOSP '97: Proceedings of the sixteenth ACM symposium on Operating systems principles},
+	Pages = {276--287},
+	Title = {Agile application-aware adaptation for mobility},
+	Year = {1997}}
+
+@article{arxiv13-enframe,
+ title={ENFrame: A Platform for Processing Probabilistic Data},
+ author={van Schaik, Sebastiaan J and Olteanu, Dan and Fink, Robert},
+ journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:1309.0373},
+ year={2013}
+}
+
+@inproceedings{sensys07-eon,
+ title={{Eon: A Language and Runtime System for Perpetual Systems}}, 
+ author="J Sorber and A Kostadinov and M Brennan and M Garber and M Corner and E D Berger", 
+ booktitle="ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys'07)",
+ month="November", year="2007"}
+
+@inproceedings{sensys07-levels,
+ title={{Meeting lifetime goals with energy levels}}, 
+ author="A Lachenmann and P J Marron and D Minder and K Rothermer", 
+ booktitle="ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys'07)",
+ month="November", year="2007"}
+
 @inproceedings{gomez2013reran,
 title={Reran: Timing-and touch-sensitive record and replay for android},
 author={Gomez, Lorenzo and Neamtiu, Iulian and Azim, Tanzirul and Millstein, Todd},
 \section{Related Work}
 \label{sec-related}
+New systems such as EnFrame~\cite{arxiv13-enframe} reflect growing interest
+in managing uncertainty at the language level. EnFrame focuses on enabling
+programming with uncertain data, rather than the runtime adaptation enabled
+by the \texttt{maybe} statement. Specifically a variable controlled by a
+\texttt{maybe} statement has a single value that is being evaluated at any
+given time, while EnFrame allows that same variable to have a distribution of
+values reflecting error or other forms of uncertainty about what it's true
+value should be.
+
 Aspect oriented programming (AOP)~\cite{aop} was proposed by Kiczales et al.
 as a programming paradigm geared toward increasing modularity through the
 separation of cross-cutting concerns in software. The programmer can express
@@ -19,3 +28,21 @@ Unfortunately, dynamic weaving and unweaving can be expensive, requiring the
 use of a JIT. Fundamentally, however, the goals of AOP and the \texttt{maybe}
 statement differ, with AOP focusing on modularity and \texttt{maybe} focused
 on increasing runtime flexibility in the face of uncertainty.
+
+\texttt{maybe} shares similaries with language-based approaches to managing
+energy consumption in wireless sensor networks such as
+Eon~\cite{sensys07-eon} and Levels~\cite{sensys07-levels}. However, these
+approaches still require programmers to express certainty by associating code
+with particular energy states, rather than allowing the runtime system to
+determine which energy states are appropriate as the \texttt{maybe} system
+would be able to do. \texttt{maybe} can also enable adaptation driven by
+goals other than energy management.
+
+Enabling more adaptive mobile systems is a challenge with a long history dating
+back to work on systems such as Odyssey~\cite{odyssey-sosp97}. However, a
+taxonomy of approaches to enabling adaptation on early mobile
+systems~\cite{badrinath2000conceptual} reflects the focus of early efforts on
+incorporating adaptation into libraries that could be used by multiple apps. As
+we have pointed out previously, while adaptation libraries are useful,
+\texttt{maybe} statements can make them more powerful by allowing programmers
+to express uncertainty.