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Xgrid

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This peer review discussion has been closed.
I've listed this article for peer review because… I am thinking about listing the article at FAC, but would like wider feedback first about the quality of the article, and constructive criticism on how it could be improved. Thanks, Foxy Loxy Pounce! 11:17, 16 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Review by Wronkiew

  • Lead section
    • Separate wikilinks so adjacent words don't link to different things. It's confusing.
    • The first sentence is not very accessible for readers unfamiliar with computer science. The second sentence gives a much better explanation of what the article is about.
      •  Not done For now I think the first sentence should contain some detail about the program without oversimplification, all the terms that could be potentially hard to understand are wikilinked, and all easy explanation is, as you say, in the next sentence. Foxy Loxy Pounce! 22:42, 25 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • "Released in January 2004, the program acts as a job scheduler, splitting and allocating tasks to available nodes." This sentence is jarring because the release date doesn't really have anything to do with how it acts.
    • The entire first paragraph is very disjointed. Each sentence says something slightly different about what Xgrid does and is, but there isn't any logical flow from one description to the next.
    • The second paragraph starts with the unfamiliar terms "BEEP infrastructure" and "XML-centered data management". These either need a more gentle introduction and definition, or you should restructure the paragraph so it doesn't go into so much detail.
    • The article is a little top-heavy. I would combine the two middle paragraphs of the lead, and consolidate some of the material.
    • "The removal of the GUI was not consistent with the version provided with the more expensive Mac OS X Server, which received many more of Zilla's functions." I don't understand how these things are inconsistent. Was the GUI removal inconsistent with Mac OS X Server's design goals? Or, was the GUI added back in for the Server release?
    • The first sentence of the last paragraph is really good. It starts with a familiar subject and explains exactly what the paragraph is talking about. It does, however, assume some reader familiarity with OPENSTEP and its relationship with Apple.
  • History
    • A notable example of Xgrid usage would be a good thing to mention in the lead. It would help readers understand what Xgrid was about, much better than trying to explain nodes and tasks.
    • "Zilla was the first distributed computing program to be released on an end-user operating system and make use of the idle screen-saver motif, a design feature found in widely used projects, such as Seti@Home and Distributed.net." Sentences that include "the first...to" need to reference a reliable source.
    • I don't understand what a non-interventive nature is. Also, the double adjective "non-x" should be avoided in favor of a single adjective, if possible.
    • "Zilla won the national ComputerWorld Smithsonian Award (Science Category) in 1991 for ease of use and non-interventive nature." This one also needs its own source citation.
  • Protocol
    • The diagram for "Xgrid Protocol" has some copyright issues. It's too close to the original diagram to support independent authorship. I don't think you could claim fair use for the diagram it is based on, because it is replaceable by a more generic diagram. I think it's a mistake to use a knockoff Apple logo this way, and it isn't really necessary to depict Macs when a standard computer symbol will do.
      •  Done Replaced some of the images used in the diagram with more generic computers. Foxy Loxy Pounce! 22:19, 25 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        I think you're still going to have problems with this image due to the similarity of composition and the copied text. Wronkiew (talk) 01:31, 26 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        Hmmm, I'll have to re-evaluate the image's design. Foxy Loxy Pounce! 12:00, 26 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        How about now? Foxy Loxy Pounce! 01:27, 28 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
        Much better. Wronkiew (talk) 05:10, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
    • I wouldn't start off the section with a list. It interrupts the flow too much; readers won't know where to start reading. You could turn the list into a table and float it, or you could try to explain the different concepts in sentence form.
    • You explain the details of how the Xgrid protocol works without really saying what it's for. You need a sentence or two to explain why the information in the section is important.

That's all for now. Got to get some sleep. Wronkiew (talk) 09:22, 25 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

  • Lead section
    • The relationship between BEEP and Xgrid is mentioned in the lead but not later in the article, which is one of the GA requirements.
    • "Easy-to-implement"? Easy for whom? Without more detail it just sounds like something from an Apple press release.
      •  Not done Xgrid provides network administrators an easy-to-implement < for network administrators. Foxy Loxy Pounce! 06:35, 28 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • History
    • The bit about the press release in Mainframe Computing seems irrelevant to me.
  • Protocol
    • "Xgrid is targeted towards computations that are largely time consuming and that can be easily segregated into smaller tasks, commonly known as embarrassingly parallel tasks." The word "largely" doesn't make much sense here, as it describes composition and not extent. Maybe replace with "very".
  • Architecture
    • The subject of the first sentence of the section is "The computation sent to the controller". Most readers will not understand (on first reading) what this has to do with the system architecture. A more familiar subject would be "The architecture", which would more effectively lead readers into the section.
    • The first sentence of the second paragraph is really good. It starts with a subject, the controller, which has already been introduced, and it explains why the detail in the rest of the paragraph is important.
    • "Depending on the number of agents on an Xgrid, the controller may assign all tasks at once (making the process simultaneous), or, in the case of a smaller number of agents, queue the tasks and assign more than one task per computer (making the process asynchronous)." This sentence is too long and should be split up.
    • Flesh out the relationship between Xgrid and BEEP.
  • Interface
    • I did not get a good sense for what the interface does from reading this section. Perhaps you could find some use cases or examples to help illustrate how the interface works and why it is important to the functioning of the system.
    • VisualHub has been discontinued. It would be more appropriate to speak of it in the past tense.
    • Is the Xgrid GUI the same as the Admin tool? The distinction is not clear.
    • Merge the stub Xgrid Admin into this article, and maybe expand the description a bit.
    • "Mac OS X Server systems has limited the efforts by the computer community" The use of "has limited" gives the impression that this problem extends into the present. Is that true?
    • "To counteract this problem, Apple's Xgrid GUI can now be downloaded for free as part of their server admin tools, which Mac OS X version 10.5 supports." Needs an "as of" to avoid becoming inaccurate if Apple decides to do something different next year.
  • References
    • No need to specify format if it's HTML. Some citations have "HTML" and some don't, which is inconsistent.
    • The date format for "Apple Computer, Inc. Agrees to Acquire NeXT Software Inc." is different from the others.
    • Why is Mainframe Computing bolded and single quoted?

I'm done for now. Let me know if you want me to take another look after you have addressed the above issues. Wronkiew (talk) 06:10, 26 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Ealdgyth (talk · contribs)

Hope this helps. Please note that I don't watchlist Peer Reviews I've done. If you have a question about something, you'll have to drop a note on my talk page to get my attention. (My watchlist is already WAY too long, adding peer reviews would make things much worse.) 02:40, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Second review by Wronkiew

  • Some parts of the lead section are boring. Normally this is not a problem, but for FA your prose has to be compelling, and the lead is the first impression reviewers will have of the quality of your prose. Here are the worst sentences in the lead:
    • "Xgrid provides network administrators an easy-to-implement method of exploiting previously unused computational power at low cost by acting as a job scheduler, splitting and allocating tasks to available nodes." This sentence combines several ideas. One is that Xgrid puts idle computers to work solving complex problems. Another is that Xgrid is easier to set up than custom distributed processing systems. Yet another is that Xgrid takes a complex task and breaks it up into smaller problems that can be solved on desktop computers. All of this is obfuscated by the providing, splitting, exploiting, and acting. You could break up the sentence into multiple concepts, as shown, but you'll have to be careful to link the concepts so that each sentence flows into the next.
    • "The program employs its own communication protocol which uses the BEEP infrastructure, a network application framework, to communicate to other nodes." Here the core concept is that Xgrid communicates with other nodes over its own protocol. Understanding this is made much more difficult for readers by introducing the complex and probably unfamiliar concepts of "BEEP infrastructure" and "network application framework". You could reorder the sentence to state the important concept first, then explain BEEP later.
    • "These nodes compute their allocated portions of the task, then return the results back to the initiating client." Trying to explain the movements of a thing is one of the more difficult concepts to write about. Here, it might be helpful to pick an example and explain how it works, rather than trying to describe an abstract system. Also, many of the terms used here have a special meaning when applied to Xgrid, and these are only really defined in the later sections of the article. You should not have to read the whole article in order to fully understand the lead section. Again, a good reason to explain an example implementation rather than an abstract one is that you can avoid the specialized terms. You might need to look for details of an example implementation in reliable sources, though, and this may not be available.
    • "This implementation makes Xgrid only effective for parallel tasks." The words "implementation", "architecture", and "protocol" mark sentences that casual readers will skip over in search of something more interesting. If you can rewrite these sentences to use either an implied or a concrete subject, do so. For example: "Because of this, Xgrid is only effective for parallel tasks." You could improve it further by replacing the "is" with a more active verb.
    • "The architecture consists of Xgrid jobs and tasks sent between the nodes on a chosen network." Again, "architecture" is a messy word borrowed for use in computer science that often accompanies hand-waving and whiteboards. "Chosen" is another piece of CS jargon that doesn't belong here. As I mentioned earlier, "jobs", "tasks", and "nodes" aren't fully defined until later in the article, so avoid them in the lead.
    • "They process their portion of the tasks, then return them to the controller, which assembles the job and provides the results to the initiating client." I've read this several times now, and I still haven't gotten much meaning out of it. Too much jargon, and it suffers from the same problem I mentioned earlier about trying to explain a complicated process without a concrete example.
  • The lead talks about a Mac OS version of Zilla. Is that accurate? The History section says that Xgrid was based on Zilla, not that Apple actually shipped Zilla on Mac OS.
  • "Simplistic" carries a connotation that I don't think you intended.\
  • When I read through "Xgrid Programming Guide: How It Works" in order to verify some information, I found I was reading sentences very similar to ones in the Architecture section. You need to go through the article carefully to make sure information drawn from this source is written in your own words rather than closely paraphrased.
  • You might want to re-think the organization of the "Protocol" and "Architecture" sections. Both seem to describe how Xgrid works, and much of the information in these sections doesn't really belong under either heading. For example, a sentence in Protocol talks about targeting embarrassingly parallel tasks, which doesn't really have anything to do with the protocol. Meanwhile, the architecture section gives a good introduction to the BEEP protocol, which isn't effectively explained when it is referenced first in the protocol section.
  • A few questions popped into my head while reviewing the article and its sources. This may indicate missing content:
    • This article is missing a section on the Xgrid API. How is the Xgrid component integrated into programs like VisualHub? What tools would you use to build a program like that? Would it run anywhere, or just on Mac OS Server? Is it included for free with Mac OS? What programming languages can access it? Does it work with 64-bit programs?
    • The source "Mac OS X Server: Xgrid" talks about Xgrid 2 and Scoreboard, which I did not see explained in this article. Also it talks about Bonjour. Is an Xgrid network self-assembling, or do you have to set it up manually? If you are running a computer on a network with an Xgrid controller, how do you join the party?
    • Do any other free or proprietary software packages compete with Xgrid? What do they do differently? Do any of them work on Mac OS? What software does, for example, Folding@Home run on?

Let me know if you need clarification on any of the above. Wronkiew (talk) 06:37, 4 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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