Taxonomies of the Multi-criteria Grid Workflow Scheduling Problem

The workflow scheduling problem which is considered difficult on the Grid becomes even more challenging when multiple scheduling criteria are used for optimization. The existing approaches can address only certain variants of the multi-criteria workflow scheduling problem, usually considering up to two contradicting criteria being scheduled in some specific Grid environments. A comprehensive description of the problem can be an important step towards more general scheduling approaches. Based on the related work and on our own experience, we propose several novel taxonomies of the multi-criteria workflow scheduling problem, considering five facets which may have a major impact on the selection of an appropriate scheduling strategy: scheduling process, scheduling criteria, resource model, task model, and workflow model. We analyze different existing workflow scheduling approaches for the Grid, and classify them according to the proposed taxonomies, identifying the most common use cases and the areas which have not been sufficiently explored yet.