A job contractor function in computing system scheduling
Stephen K. Kwan · Medical Entomology and Zoology · 1982
The computing system is an expensive and valuable resource to its user community. As with other scarce resources, management is concerned with both the effective and efficient performance of the system. Traditionally, the effectiveness and efficiency issues have been dealt with separately. The efficient performance of the computing system is enhanced by the research in hardware and software technology. Advances in the system effectiveness research have been from information economics, user-oriented studies and microeconomics applications. Each approach by itself, deals with only one aspect of the management of the system. In this research, a broader view of the management of the computing system is proposed. The effectiveness and efficiency issues are treated as a joint problem. The decision makers in the environment of the computing system are using it as a data processing tool. The computing system's internal allocation of resources is represented by the Job and Task Manager functions. An intermediary, called the Job Contractor, is introduced between the computing system and its environment. The function of the Job Contractor is to maintain a market environment by supervising the cooperative exchange of information and agreements between supplies (the system's view of availability of resources) and demands (the decision maker's preferences of processing options). With this cooperative exchange system, the decision maker can employ the services of the computing system more effectively and the system can allocate its resources more efficiently.