[IP] Worlds collide: Web services framework for grid
Delivered-To: dfarber+@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2004 13:48:40 +0000
From: Brian Randell <Brian.Randell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Worlds collide: Web services framework for grid
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To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Hi Dave:
Here, for IP if you wish, is an article about what I understand is
currently a very hot issue in the Grid community, that of "building grid
applications from existing Web services software, rather than coding
especially for a grid framework", an issue in which some of my colleagues
here at Newcastle are very much involved.
Source: Government Computing News:
http://gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/24939-1.html
02/13/04
Worlds collide: Web services framework for grid
By Joab Jackson
REVISED 2-13-2004 A British technology center is building a new kind of
framework to join the new worlds of grid computing and Web services.
The Grid Application Framework, called WS-GAF, could bring commercial Web
services software to grid networkers, said Paul Watson, a professor of
computing science at the University of Newcastle and a co-developer of the
framework.
The framework sprang from a report released last August by the U.K. North
East Regional e-Science Centre and middleware provider Arjuna Technologies
Ltd. of Newcastle upon Tyne. The U.K. Department of Trade and Industry and
the Physical Sciences Research Council fund the e-Science Centre at Newcastle.
The report recommended building grid applications from existing Web
services software, rather than coding especially for a grid framework,
Watson said. Web services can cut costs of developing grid applications as
well as tap into a growing body of expertise, he said.
Using Web services for grid computing networks could bring many benefits,
said Ian Foster, who heads the Distributed Systems Lab at the Energy
Department's Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. Foster spoke by
teleconference at a grid computing conference sponsored by the Woodrow
Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.
Foster is a member of the Globus Alliance of grid software developers.
Last month the alliance, along with IBM Corp., also released a set of grid
computer and Web services interoperability specifications, called the Web
Service-Resource Framework. Watson said WS-RF has goals similar to WS-GAF's.
IT vendors such as IBM Corp., Microsoft Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc.
are "rallying around Web services as an important mechanism for creating
distributed systems," Foster said. "Web services facilitate a
service-oriented view of the world, in which individual resource providers
can stand up access to specialized data sets or specialized computational
procedures. They let us move toward a world where services can be defined
easily, described in uniform ways and linked together to create even more
sophisticated capabilities."
The framework group is trying to define Web services-grid interoperability
and exploring possible use on existing grid projects. The North East
Regional e-Science Centre is involved in 12 grid projects funded by
government and industry, Watson said.
There is further coverage of Ian Foster's views, and on WS-RF, at:
http://dsonline.computer.org/0402/d/o2004a.htm
and of WS-GAF at:
http://www.neresc.ac.uk/ws-gaf/
Cheers
Brian
--
School of Computing Science, University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne,
NE1 7RU, UK
EMAIL = Brian.Randell@xxxxxxxxx PHONE = +44 191 222 7923
FAX = +44 191 222 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/~brian.randell/
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