METHOD FOR THE INTEROPERATION OF VIRTUAL ORGANIZATIONS

A cooperative data stream processing system is provided that utilizes a plurality of independent, autonomous and possibly heterogeneous sites in a cooperative arrangement to process user-defined job requests over dynamic, continuous streams of data. A method is provided to organize the distributed sites into a plurality of virtual organizations that can be further combined and virtualized into virtualized virtual organizations. These virtualized virtual organizations can also include additional distributed sites and existing virtualized virtual organizations and all members of a given virtualized virtual organization can share data and processing resources in order to process jobs on either a task-based or goal-based allocation mechanism. The virtualized virtual organization is created dynamically using ad-hoc collaborations among the members and is arranged in either a federated or cooperative architecture. Collaborations between members is either tightly-coupled or loosely coupled. Flexible management of resources is provided with resources being provided under exclusive control or based on best-effort access.