Dynamic and evolutionary placement in an event-driven component-oriented network data processing system

Abstract

Method, system and computer readable program code for dynamic and evolutionary component placement in an event processing system having producers, consumers, a plurality of nodes between the producers and the consumers, and a flow graph representing operator components to be executed between the producers and the consumers. A description of a change to the system is received. At each node, next-hop neighbor nodes for each consumer are identified. A routing value is assigned to each next-hop neighbor node for each consumer and the routing values are updated according to an update rule that represents a chromosome in a routing probe. The update rule in a routing probe is selectively updated from a plurality of update rules at the consumer. The probability of selecting a particular update rule is reinforced or decayed based on the success of an update rule in allowing routing probes to create many different efficient routes. At each producer, nests of scouting probes are adaptively selected from an available set of nests and dispatched to execute hypothetical placement of a query by an independent agent called a 'leader'. A placement of the operator components that minimizes performance cost of the system relative to the hypothetical placement is selected. Each scouting probe contains chromosomes that guide placement. Scouting probes in two different nests have different chromosomes. The performance cost of the hypothetical changed placement is evaluated and the performance evaluation is used to evolve at least one chromosome of a scouting ant in each nest.