Worlds collide: Web services framework for grid

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Delivered-To: dfarber+ () ux13 sp cs cmu edu
Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2004 13:48:40 +0000
From: Brian Randell <Brian.Randell () newcastle ac uk>
Subject: Worlds collide: Web services framework for grid
X-Sender: nbr () popin newcastle ac uk
To: dave () farber net

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 () ncl ac uk   PHONE = +44 191 222 7923
FAX = +44 191 222 8232  URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/~brian.randell/

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