DOT: A Matrix Model for Analyzing, Optimizing and Deploying Software for Big Data Analytics in Distributed Systems

by Yin Huai, Rubao Lee, Simon Zhang, Cathy H. Xia and Xiaodong Zhang

I heard the talk in HIC 2011 but hardly knew what this paper is about. After reading the paper for a while, I realized that the author just formulates the jobs in a distributed system with a so-called DOT expression, i.e. data (row vector), operator (several column vectors) and transformation (another function on aggregated output of operators). Therefore a matrix-like expression can be formulated this way. Apparently Map/Reduce and dryad jobs can be formulated with it.

The authour discussed a little bit about the property of DOT formulation but I think they are way behind math. I don't see any necessity in formulating those jobs with this strange expression. The algebra also doesn't reveal anything appealing. Maybe I am wrong. After all I am not in that field.