[communities] GGF Proposal Submission

[m.wilkinson at epcc.ed.ac.uk]

proposers_name: Maureen Wilkinson 
 
affiliation: NextGRID (The University of Edinburgh) 

email: m.wilkinson at epcc.ed.ac.uk 

proposed_title: Grid Architecture Experts Workshop 

session_type: Workshop 

proposed_duration: 90 mins 

target_audience: Primarily technical experts, users and developers from both the research and business communities. 

num_attendees: 50 

abstract: Grid Architecture Experts Workshop - Abstract
Maureen Wilkinson, NextGRID Project

Developing the architecture of the next generation Grid is a key challenge facing the Grid research community. This experts’ workshop, organised by the European Commission funded NextGRID Project, will discuss examples of current work in this area with a focus on:
•	An overview of the OGSA Base Profile V1.0 noting NextGRID input to this work;
•	The architectural vision of the NextGRID project and progress to date;
•	A presentation of the architectural ideas behind the OntoGrid Project;
•	Status updates from Asia.
 

synopsis: Grid Architecture Experts Workshop – Synopsis
Maureen Wilkinson, NextGRID Project

Introduction
Developing the architecture of the next generation Grid is a key challenge facing the Grid research community. This experts’ workshop, organised by the European Commission funded NextGRID Project, will discuss examples of current work in this area with a focus on:
•	An overview of the OGSA Base Profile V1.0 noting NextGRID input to this work;
•	The architectural vision of the NextGRID project and progress to date;
•	A presentation of the architectural ideas behind the OntoGrid Project;
•	Status updates from Asia.

Pioneering projects, largely science-based, in Europe, the US and Asia have demonstrated the positive benefits afforded by current Grid technologies. This is particularly true in the health sector where some large cancer research projects are now gathering speed and will hopefully afford real benefits and breakthroughs across society.
Although the Grid can be said to be delivering in a scientific context, the same is not true in the business domain. Unless the Grid can be seen to offer real benefits to business it will remain a powerful tool for science and will be largely ignored by business, except in its simplest application server and clustered computing form. In the worst case we will see a complete divergence in Grid computing between science and business.
The purpose of efforts to develop the architecture of the next generation Grid is to ensure that future Grid technologies can meet everyone’s needs and that the Grid can meet its true potential.

OGSA Base Profile V1.0
The OGSA WSRF (Web Services Resource Framework) Basic Profile 1.0 (aka \"WSRF Basic Profile\") describes uses of widely accepted specifications that have been found to enable interoperability. The specifications considered in this profile are, in general, those associated with the addressing, modeling and management of state. The WSRF Basic Profile combines the WS-I Basic Profile 1.1, WS-I Basic Security Profile 1.0 with WS-Addressing (from W3C) and several standards from the OASIS WS Resource Framework and WS Notification Technical Committees.
A full overview of the OGSA Base Profile V1.0 will be given, noting NextGRID input to this work which NextGRID has adopted as a starting point for its architecture.

NextGRID’s Architectural Vision
The three-year NextGRID project is unique in that it focuses almost entirely on the development of architectural designs for the next generation Grid. The broad NextGRID vision is of a networked IT infrastructure to support an unlimited range of applications and business processes throughout their lifecycle. This includes all resources – hardware, software, data and services, available from a complex ecosystem of providers.
The primary goal of NextGRID is to define the architecture that will lead to the emergence of the Next Generation Grid. This will prepare the way for the mainstream use of Grid technologies and their widespread adoption by organisations and individuals from across the business and public domains. In addition to new architectural designs, NextGRID will contribute to the key middleware components, application support mechanisms, know-how and standards that underpin the Next Generation Grid.
Of course, NextGRID cannot address these objectives alone. The participants in NextGRID are the representatives of a much larger community of researchers, technology vendors, service providers and users. This workshop is an example of how the project is working with this wider community, providing critical input and thought leadership to the development of the architecture for future Grids, incorporating our results into widely accepted standards, and so encompassing a much larger body of work within our own organisations and in the community at large.
The project structure, which will be described along with details of the project’s initial work, is built around the architectural design process. This process is informed by the development work, business and operational activities and application experimentation. At the end of each 6-month design cycle, the results are fed into the development activities, which focus on Grid foundations, dynamics and interactions. The consolidated outputs of the project are exploited up by its standardisation activity and the business partners in the project.
A key aspect of the current NextGRID conceptual architecture is that all interactions will be governed through bipartite “partnership” service level agreements (SLAs). NextGRID believes that SLAs should be used to build relationships between service providers and consumers, and provide the necessary information to set up the environment and components to manage the service. The SLA should outline details that are agreed by both parties, and allow for the service to be operated and monitored in accordance with the consumer requirements and in an economically sustainable manner. NextGRID’s work in this area will be discussed in detail.

The Architecture Behind OntoGrid
One of the greatest challenges now faced in Grid Computing regards the ability to explicitly share and deploy knowledge to be used for the development of innovative Grid infrastructure, and for Grid applications – the Semantic Grid. To address this challenge the OntoGrid project is producing the technological infrastructure for the rapid prototyping and development of knowledge-intensive distributed open services for the Semantic Grid. 
Designing Grid applications that make use of a Semantic Grid requires a new and sound methodology which OntoGrid will develop. The results are aimed at developing Grid systems that optimize cross-process, cross-company and cross-industry collaboration. A principle of OntoGrid is to adopt and influence standards in Semantic Grid and Grid Computing, in particular the Open Grid Service Architecture. 
An overview of the OntoGrid architecture will be presented at the workshop (this is the first time that OntoGrid will have revealed their ideas in public) providing an excellent opportunity to see how this project’s work fits with other current architectural projects such as NextGRID.

Architectural Design in Asia
Although the Grid concept was pioneered in the US, and the EU currently runs some of the most ambitious grid projects, Asia is playing an increasingly active role. It is estimated that there are now 10 national-scale Grid projects in seven countries in Asia, in addition to a large number of smaller initiatives.
Considerable work is taking place in Japan with the National Research Grid Initiative (NAREGI) led by Satoshi Matsuoka. The goal of NAREGI is to develop Grid infrastructure software for widely distributed supercomputing environments in advanced research and education. The initiative is involved in many facets of R&D, including grid software that makes up the cyber-science infrastructure for large-scale simulations at the National Institute of Informatics (NI), secure grid network environments, and nano applications in Grid environments. Similar work is also taking place in China. 

Workshop Format
We expect that the Workshop will run for around 90 minutes. There will be various presentations from invited major Grid architecture experts including Satoshi Matsuoka and Depei Qian and the first public airing of the OntoGrid architecture. Following these various presentations there will be a moderated discussion session focusing on the issues raised and encouraging participation from all the workshop attendees.

Outreach
NextGRID will announce the Workshop on its website and will make the presentations widely available after the event. The following members of the NextGRID project will help to publicise the workshop through their extensive network of contacts: Mark Parsons, Francis Wray, Malcolm Atkinson, Neil Chue Hong, Mark Sawyer.
 

tech_requirements: No special technology requirements. 

prereq_participants: None but participants should have an interest in grid architecture. 

advertise_suggestion: NextGRID will advertise the Workshop through their existing mailing lists.