Olivier Dalle's
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important<< Job(s) available to work in Mascotte !
Open position, starting Sep 2011:

  • postdoc (12 month) on Composability and reuse in component-based simulation, within the OSA project.

See details here

SIMUTools 2012
5th Intl. Conf. on Simulation Tools and Techniques
Sirmione, Italy, March 19–23 2012

1.  What I Do

I am Maître de Conférences (eqv associate professor) at University of Nice - Sophia Antipolis (since Sept 2000).

1.1  About My Research Affiliations

I am member of the MASCOTTE Research group. Noticed all these logos on the top left of this page? Good, these are all my affiliations. Indeed, MASCOTTE is a common group of the INRIA and the I3S Laboratory, which is itself a mixed research unit (UMR 6070) of the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis (UNS) and CNRS. And our team is currently hosted within the INRIA Sophia Antipolis Research Center (CRISAM), on the Sophia Antipolis ICST Campus.

1.2  Teaching activities

I teach networks, operating systems, programming, and simulation within the Computing Science department (aka Informatique in French, see this quote from Dijkstra about this terminology issue).

In 2009–2010, I was co-head of the Cryptography, Systems, Security & Networking (CSSR) of the 2d year of the Master in Computer Science. This new curriculum is a merge of two previously existing curriculi: Cryptography & Security (CS) and Systems, Security & Networking (SSR) that were both created in 2008.

From 2003 to 2006, I was in charge of the 1st year of the Comp. Science Master’s Degree. (Fabrice Huet succeeded me in charge of 1st year of the Comp. Science Master’s Degree.)

New opportunity for foreign students: in 2009, our Computer Science Master starts offering a new full-time english (research oriented) curriculum in Ubiquitous Networking and Computing.

Students that also speak French, may be interested by the Cryptography, Systems, Security & Networking (CSSR) curriculum, in which some of the lectures are given in English and others in French (depending on students selection).

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2.  Current Research

My current research activities focus on telecomunication networks simulation and in particular on component based modeling techniques. In this scope I used to be involved and still participate to the following projects:

2.1  Funded Projects

The INFRA-SONGS ANR Project (2012–2015)

The SONGS Project is a follow-up to the USS-SIMGRID ANR Project (see also here). The goal of the SONGS project is to extend the applicability of the SimGrid simulation framework from Grids and Peer-to-Peer systems to Clouds and High Performance Computation systems. Each type of large-scale computing system will be addressed through a set of use cases and lead by researchers recognized as experts in this area. Any sound study of such systems through simulations relies on the following pillars of simulation methodology: Efficient simulation kernel; Sound and validated models; Simulation analysis tools; Campaign simulation management.

The EA DISSIMINET (Associated Team) (2011–2013)

Since January 2011, the MASCOTTE project-team is an associate team with ARS Laboratory at Carleton University, Ottawa, ON (Canada). This Franco-Canadian team will advance research on the definition of new algorithms and techniques for component-based simulation using a web-services based approach. On one hand, the use of web-services is expected to solve the critical issues that pave the way toward the simulation of systems of unprecedented complexity, especially (but not exclusively) in the studies involving large networks such as Peer-to-peer networks. Web-Service oriented approaches have numerous advantages, such as allowing the reuse of existing simulators, allowing non-computer experts to merge their respective knowledge, or seamless integration of complementary services (eg. on-line storage and repositories, weather forecast, traffic, etc.). One important expected outcome of this approach is to significantly the simulation methodology in network studies, especially by enforcing the seamless reproducibility and traceability of simulation results. On the other hand, a net-centric approach of simulation based on web-services comes at the cost of added complexity and incurs new practices, both at the technical and methodological levels. The results of this common research will be integrated into both teams’ discrete-event distributed simulators: the CD++ simulator at Carleton University and the simulation middle-ware developed in the MASCOTTE EPI, called OSA, whose developments are supported by an INRIA ADT (Development Action) named OSA starting in December 2011.

The OSA project (Supported by INRIA since 2005, currently by an ADT funding, 2011-2012)

OSA stands for Open Simulation Architecture. This is a development project for a new discrete event simulation platform. The original elements of this new platform are:

  1. the integration in the same tool of a large number of the Modeling & Simuilation concerns (modeling, developments, instrumenting, …)
  2. the extensive of Component-Based Sofware Engineering (CBSE) techniques, and more particularly the Fractal component model (for example, in order to ease the reuse and replacement of parts of the platform AND models —cf this paper — )
  3. the use of Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP) techniques in order to separate concerns
  4. an open (Open Source) and modular architecture, easy to use (automatic dependencies management based on a Maven repository), inspired AND based on Eclipse
  5. a collaborative development model (forge, wiki …)

OSA v0.6 is available on the INRIA forge with a demo of Peer-to-peer storage simulation.

1 Software Engineer position available to work on this project starting Sept 2010 (1 yr, renewable). Details about how to apply soon published here.

2.2  Latest and soon coming Visitors

  • Gabriel Wainer, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada (July 2012)
  • Joe Peters, SFU, Vancouver, Canada (June 2012)
  • Rassul Ayani, KTH, Stockholm, Sweeden (February-March 2012)
  • Gabriel Wainer, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada (June-July 2011)

2.3  Recent talks

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3.  Open Positions

No position available at present, but some opportunities coming soon. Watch this page regularly.

3.1  Postdoc (12 months) : Composability and reuse in component-based simulation

Position CLOSED

Some positions recently filled:

3.2  Postdoc (12 months) on ANR USS SIMGRID Project.

Closed. Position filled. See details about the research topic in the description of the USS-SIMGRID project on my CurrentResearch page.

3.3  Beginner Engineering position (12 months, renewable once)

on ADT OSA project.

Closed. Position filled.

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4.  Old Stuff

I was a Ph.D. Student in the Sloop project-team (former name of the Mascotte project-team) from December 1994 to December 1998; my advisors were Michel Syska and Jean-Claude Bermond. Then I had a postdoctoral fellowship with CNES (the french Space Agency) from January 1999 to August 2000.

The USS-SIMGRID ANR Project (2010–2011)

Starting Sept 2010, I am taking over the Tasks 2.3 and 6.2 of WP6 of the USS-SIMGRID ANR Project, following the departure of my colleague F. Lefessant (INRIA Saclay). Our contribution to this project will be two-fold:

  1. Application Workload Characterization. The goal of this task is to capture the workload through a set of defined events. Some of them (such as send and receive) are shared between all applications, but they are very low-level. Higher level events have to be specific to the application. For example, in a P2P DHT, join or lookup are classic events while submit is often seen in a batch scheduler context. This task has two goals. First, we aim at implementing an instrumentation tool able to capture the low-level events of any application (using system-level solutions such as ld preload), and record them accordingly to a generic event format. Then, we want to provide a solution to generate the simulation code corresponding to a given event log. We do not plan on providing a tool to capture high-level traces since they are too application-specific for us to devise a generic tool.
  2. Peer-to-peer backups: Simulation environments for large scale distributed applications, such as peer-to-peer video on-demand systems or generic peer-to-peer storage systems, are generally limited to the estimation of metrics such as the number of messages exchanged between the different peers and do not consider timing issues. In the particular case of peer-to-peer backup, being able to estimate the time needed to load or store a file chunk is crucial. We expect the use of such a tool to provide a better understanding of the behavior of a working backup system, and in particular, to compute some parameters that impact the performance of the system and are hard to guess from standard simulations (sizes of volumes, sizes of chunks, failure detection delays) where network characteristics are taken into account enough.

4.1  The Spiderman project (Supported by INRIA, since 2008)

Spiderman is a project initiated by my PhD student Juan-Carlos Maureira and our colleague Diego Dujovne (INRIA Planete project-team). It is new system designed to provide network connectivity to in-motion communicating devices inside buses, trains or subways, moving at high speed. The system is made of two parts. The mobile part, called \emph{Spiderman Device}, is installed in the mobile vehicles and provides a standard WiFi connection service to end users. The static part is made of multiple identical devices, called Wireless Switch, which are installed all along the path and provide the connection with the fixed network infrastructure. The connection between the mobile and fixed parts is maintained using a two-radio IEEE802.11 hand-over custom-made procedure, implemented within the Spiderman device. This handover procedure is designed in order to ensure a continuous connection at the data link layer level for vehicles moving at high speeds up 150 km/h and possibly higher. The system is currently under testing.

4.2  The SPREADS ANR Project (2007–2010)

SPREADS is the acronym for Safe P2p-based REliable Architecture for Data Storage. It is a common research project between UbiStorage, I3S/INRIA/Mascotte, Eurecom/NSTeam, LIP6/INRIA/REGAL and LACL/SC. The project started in Dec. 2007 with a funding from the French National Research Agency (ANR) with an additional sponsorship from the SCS pole of competitivity. Many other people are working with me on this exciting project in the Mascotte team (At the time of writing, we are no less than 2 assoc. profs, 1 Research associate, 1 postdoc, 1 enginner, 3 PhD students !)

4.3  The BROCCOLI INRIA ARC Project (2008–2009)

The goal of the BROCCOLI ARC project is to design a platform for describing, deploying, executing, observing, administrating, and reconfiguring large-scale component-based software architectures, in particular for building discrete event simulation applications. In addition to the Mascotte Project team (Judicael Ribault, Fabrice Peix and me), this project involves 2 other research groups:

4.4  The OSERA ANR project (2005–2008)

OSERA is a project founded by ANR that aims at studying Ambiant Networks in Urban Areas. I am working on this project with two other members of the Mascotte team, Hervé Rivano et David Coudert. Hervé and David mainly focus on optimization and algorithmic apects, and I focus on the simulation and discrete-event modeling ones. For this purpose, I initiated the design and development of a new open component-based simulation platform called OSA. I work on this platform with the help of Cyrine Mrabet, who is Associate Engineer in our team and Judicael Ribault (MEng. student in CS. Engineering).

4.5  ASIMUT CNES project (1999–2004)

Asimut is a telecommunications network simulator. During my post-doc at the French Space Agency center at Toulouse, I participated to the design effort of a new simulation environment for (satellite) telecommunication networks, called ASIMUT. In short, ASIMUT innovates in the field of network simulation, because it rely on a new hierarchical, component-based modeling concept. ASIMUT is complete environment that provides support for network architecture design, simulation campains, experiment planing, data analysis and, to some extent, model components developpment (in C++).

4.6  “Exotic” File Systems for Unix/Linux

I started to focus on this topic during my PhD with the Multi-Points Communications File Systems. MPCFS is a kernel extension that allows Unix users to exchange data between Unix systems by simply reading or writing these data to/from special files. What is interesting in this approach is that once the MPCFS extension (a kernel module) is plugged in the operating system, users can benefit from its multi-points communication ability without any special tools or library. Sending data accross the network is as easy as writing to a file, or redirecting the standard output of a process to a nammed pipe.

Unfortunately, the first prototype of MPCFS for Linux (1998) was too big and buggy to be of real use. Since the idea was still funny, I decided to restart the project from the begining (2001) with a much more modular approach: develop the File System based API on one hand, and the multi-point communications protocols on the other hand. The first prtotype of the API part was released in 2002 by Olivier Francoise. The protocol part is still under study…

If you want to learn more, you may have a look to the slides (PDF file, 682 KB) of the talk I gave at Sun Labs Europe (Grenoble, France) in november 2002…

… or to this newer version of the slides I use for the talk I gave to the SolutionsLinux Conférence in february 2003 (formats OpenOffice SXI or HTML)

4.7  Communications and dynamic load balancing for parallel and distributed architectures

I worked on this topic during my PhD. thesis and especially on Networks of Workstations:

  • In order to modelize the behavior (the performance level according to the workload level) of the several kinds of workstations available in a local area network, I developped the LoadBuilder environment, a distributed platform designed for the definition and management of distributed experiments. When complete, this platform should help in designing efficient information policies for multi-criteria dynamic load balancing algorithms.
  • With the help of a few engineer trainees of the neighbouring School of Computer Engineering (ESSI), I initiated a project whose goal is to include into a UNIX kernel (Linux) all the functionnalities allowing distributed parallel applications to transparently communicate through the file system. This project resulted in the development of a virtual file system driver for Linux: MPCFS.
  • I was involved in the setting up of the first cluster of workstations that was being installed in INRIA Sophia Antipolis Research Center. I was especially interested in the performance evaluation of its communication network and i was also in charge of installing and evaluating the performances of a small Myrinet network over these workstations.
  • I regularly participated to the GRAPPES Working Group meetings, in which french teams interested in the various aspects of cluster computing presented their work and ongoing research.

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5.  Students

Former Students

I was happy (and lucky :-) to supervise the following PhD. students:

  • Julian Monteiro, 2007–2010 (co-advisor with S. Perennes)
Modeling and Analysis of Reliable Peer-to-Peer Storage Systems
http://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00545724/fr/
  • Juan-Carlos Maureira, 2008–2011 (co-advisor with JC Bermond)
  • Judicael Ribault, 2008–2011
Reuse and Scalability in Modeling and Simulation Software Engineering
http://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-00604014/fr/

Lately, I also supervised the following student interships (2010)

  • Inza Bamba, Master 2 IFI (Ubinet), M.Sc. Research Internship (6mon)
  • Alaedin Moussa, Polytech’Marseille 2nd year, Research Initiation Internship (2mon)

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6.  Other Research Activities

6.1  Conference & Workshop organizations

6.2  Conference Programme Committee Memberships

6.3  Stays abroad

6.4  Miscellaneous tasks & memberships

  • Expert reviewer for Ministry of Higher Education & Research (MESR) CIR applications (Credit Impot Recherche) (2010-)
  • Member of the Comité de Sélection for a permanent faculty position at Univ. of Provence (Marseille) (2010)
  • Expert reviewer for ANR projects and other similar submissions (2008)
  • Member of the VerSim workgroup, where french-speaking people discuss theoretical aspects of simulation (I organized the last meeting in Sophia Antipolis, June 6th 2006)
  • I am member of the Commission de Spécialistes 27e section of U. Nice (the computer science scientific committee) since 2001.
  • I am also member of several committees in both my two research labs: the Commission Développements Logiciels (Sofware Developments Committee) of INRIA Sophia Antipolis, the Commision Informatique (Computing technical committee) of I3S, …
  • I am member of various societies (ACM SIGSIM, ICST, IEEE CS, SCS, …). (Unless I forgot to renew membership…)

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7.  Recent Bibliography (Full biblio…)

  1. Olivier Dalle and Emilio Mancini (2012) Integrated Tools for the Simulation Analysis of Peer-To-Peer Backup Systems. In Proceedings of the 2012 Intl Conference on Simulation Tools and Techniques (SIMUTOOLS 2012). Sirmione, Italy, March. (F. Quaglia and J. Himmelspach, Eds.) 6p.To appear. (BibTeX)
  2. Olivier Dalle (2011) Should Simulation Products Use Software Engineering Techniques or Should They Reuse Products of Software Engineering? — Part 1. Modeling \& Simulation Magazine, 11(3).Online publication. (PDF) (BibTeX)
  3. Gabriel A. Wainer, Khaldoon Al-Zoubi, Olivier Dalle, David R.C. Hill, S. Mittal, J.L. Risco Mart{\’i}n, Hessam Sarjoughian, L. Touraille, Mamadou K. Traor{é} and Bernard P. Zeigler (2011) Standardizing DEVS model representation. In Discrete-Event Modeling and Simulation: Theory and Applications, G. Wainer, P. Mosterman Eds., Taylor and Francis, pages 427–458. (BibTeX)
  4. Olivier Dalle (2011) Should Simulation Products Use Software Engineering Techniques or Should They Reuse Products of Software Engineering? — Part 2. Modeling \& Simulation Magazine, 11(4).Online publication. (PDF) (BibTeX)
  5. Gabriel A. Wainer, Khaldoon Al-Zoubi, Olivier Dalle, David R.C. Hill, S. Mittal, J.L. Risco Mart{\’i}n, Hessam Sarjoughian, L. Touraille, Mamadou K. Traor{é} and Bernard P. Zeigler (2011) Standardizing DEVS Simulation Middleware. In Discrete-Event Modeling and Simulation: Theory and Applications, G. Wainer, P. Mosterman Eds., Taylor and Francis, pages 459–494. (BibTeX)
  6. Emilio Mancini and Olivier Dalle (2011) Traces generation to simulate large-scale distributed applications. In Proceedings of the 2011 Winter Simulation Conference (WSC’11). Phoenix, AZ, December. (S. Jain, R. R. Creasey, J. Himmelspach, K. P. White and M. Fu, Eds.) 10p. (BibTeX)
  7. Olivier Dalle and Judica{ë}l Ribault (2011) Some Desired Features for the DEVS Architecture Description Language. In Proceedings of the Symposium On Theory of Modeling and Simulation — DEVS Integrative M&S Symposium (TMS/DEVS 2011). Boston, MA, USA, April 4–9, 10p. (PDF) (BibTeX)
  8. Judica{ë}l Ribault, Olivier Dalle, Denis Conan and Sebastien Leriche (2010) OSIF: A Framework To Instrument, Validate, and Analyze Simulations. In In Proc. of 3rd Intl. ICST Conference on Simulation Tools and Techniques (SIMUTools’2010). Torremolinos, Spain, 15–19 March. (URL) (BibTeX)
  9. Olivier Dalle and Gabriel Wainer (2010) Software Tools, Techniques and Architectures for Computer Simulation. SIMULATION: Transactions of the Society of Modeling and Simulation International, 86(5–6):267–269.Special Issue Editorial. (PDF) (BibTeX)
  10. Paula Uribe, Juan Carlos Maureira Bravo and Olivier Dalle (2010) Extending INET Framework for Directional and Asymmetrical Wireless Communications. In Proc. of the 2010 Intl. ICST Workshop on Omnet++ (Omnet++ 2010). Torremolinos, Spain, 15–19 March, pages 1–8. (BibTeX)
  11. Paula Uribe, Juan-Carlos Maureira and Olivier Dalle (2010) Extending INET Framework for Directional and Asymmetrical Wireless Communications. Research Report RR-7120, INRIA. (URL) (BibTeX)
  12. Gabriel Wainer, Qi Liu, Olivier Dalle and Bernard P. Zeigler (2010) Applying Cellular Automata and DEVS Methodologies to Digital Games: A Survey. Simulation \& Gaming. Sage Publishers, 41(6):796–823. (URL) (BibTeX)
  13. (2010) SIMULATION: Transactions of the Society of Modeling and Simulation International. Special Issue on Software Tools, Techniques and Architectures for Computer Simulation. (Olivier Dalle and Gabriel Wainer, Eds.) Sage. (BibTeX)
  14. Olivier Dalle, John R. Heath and Gabriel Wainer (2009) Development Tools and Techniques for Mobile Telecommunications. Mobile Networks and Applications (MONET).Special Issue Editorial. Online publication. (URL) (BibTeX)
  15. Jan Himmelspach, Olivier Dalle and Judicaël Ribault (2009) Design considerations for M\&S software. In Proceedings of the Winter Simulation Conference (WSC’09). Austin, TX, December 13–16. (D. Rossetti, R. R. Hill, B. Johansson, A. Dunkin and R. G. Ingalls, Eds.).Invited Paper. (URL) (BibTeX)
  16. Olivier Dalle, Frédéric Giroire, Julian Monteiro and Stéphane Pérennes (2009) Analyse des Corrélations entre Pannes dans les Systèmes de Stockage Pair-à-Pair. In 11ème Rencontres Francophones sur les Aspects Algorithmiques des T\’el\’ecommunications (ALGOTEL 2009). Carry Le Rouet, France, Juin. (BibTeX)
  17. Juan-Carlos Maureira, Diego Dujovne and Olivier Dalle (2009) Generation of Realistic 802.11 Interferences in the Omnet++ INET Framework Based on Real Traffic Measurements. In Second International Workshop on Omnet++. Rome, Italy, March 6. (PDF) (BibTeX)
  18. Juan-Carlos Maureira, Diego Dujovne and Olivier Dalle (2009) Network Provisioning for High Speed Vehicles Moving along Predictable Routes - Part 1: Spiderman Handover. Research Report RR-6850, INRIA. (URL) (BibTeX)
  19. Olivier Dalle, Frédéric Giroire, Julian Monteiro and Stéphane Pérennes (2009) Analysis of Failure Correlation Impact on Peer-to-Peer Storage Systems. In Proc. of 9th Intl. Conf. on Peer-to-Peer Computing (P2P09). Seattle, Sept 8–11, pages 184–193. (BibTeX)
  20. (2009) Mobile Networks and Applications (MONET) : Special Issue on Development Tools and Techniques for Mobile Telecommunications. (Olivier Dalle, John R. Heath and Gabriel Wainer, Eds.) Springer Netherlands.Online publication. (URL) (BibTeX)
  21. Judicael Ribault, Fabrice Peix, Julian Monteiro and Olivier Dalle (2009) OSA: an Integration Platform for Component-Based Simulation. In Proc. of the Second Intl. Conf. on Simulation Tools and Techniques (SIMUTools09). Rome, Italy, March 3–5.Poster. (PDF) (BibTeX)
  22. Juan-Carlos Maureira, Paula Uribe, Olivier Dalle, Takeshi Asahi and Jorge Amaya (2009) Component based approach using OMNeT++ for Train Communication Modeling. In Proceedings of 9th International Conference on ITS Telecommunication. Lille, France, October 20–22. (URL) (BibTeX)
  23. (2009) Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Simulation Tools and Techniques (SIMUTools 2009). (Olivier Dalle, Luiz-Felipe Perrone, Giovanni Stea and Gabriel A. Wainer, Eds.), Rome, Italy. (URL) (BibTeX)