[ogsa-naming-wg] Re: GGF/OGSA standards for hierarchical namespaces

[Hiro Kishimoto]

Hi Chris, Allen and Greg,

Thank you very much for this very important proposal.

OGSA-WG will have F2F meeting next week in Sunnyvale
and OGSA-naming WG's session is 10:30am-12:30pm PDT
Wednesday April 5.

https://forge.gridforum.org/projects/ogsa-wg/document/2006Apr-OGSA-F2F-agenda

Chris: If you can join this session either by phone or
in person, we could have a first open discussion next
week and follow up at GGF17.

Please let me know your availability. Thanks,
----
Hiro Kishimoto

Gregory Newby wrote:
> It's not too late to schedule time at GGF17 for a cross-group
> meeting.  (Well, it's a little too late...but not completely
> unreasonable to attempt.)
>   -- Greg
> 
> 
> On Tue, Mar 28, 2006 at 11:17:54AM -0800, Allen Luniewski wrote:
> 
>>Chris,
>>
>>Thanks for the very thoughtful note!  A few comments.
>>
>>I agree with you that the current situation is, to put it mildly, not 
>>acceptable.  We need to move to a position where the community agrees on a 
>>single means for creating a hierarchy of pointers to resources (a 
>>directory structure in Unix-speak).  Clearly one aspect of this is that 
>>RNS and WS-Directory need to reconciled into a single proposal. Resolution 
>>sooner rather than later is clearly in the best interests of the various 
>>WGs who depend upon directories (including OGSA Data which I share 
>>responsibility for).
>>
>>You mention a couple of specific technical issues.  A few comments on 
>>those:
>>        1. I go back and forth on attributes in the directory system. 
>>Since these are almost certainly cached from the resources, today I am 
>>inclined to say that
>>                attributes should not be part of the directory system. Ask 
>>me tomorrow, and I may have the other answer :-)  But today, I would leave 
>>them out
>>                of the base specification for simplicity but consider an 
>>extension that included attributes if that were felt to be vital.
>>        2. Dave Berry's suggestion to separate out the iterator component 
>>is a good one.  There are going to be many places in the overall grid 
>>standards
>>                effort where an iterator-like structure will be needed. 
>>Standardizing this seems like a proper goal for GGF.  If that is accepted 
>>then using it
>>                in a directory service seems quite natural.
>>
>>As for moving forward, I think that we need to see how this thread plays 
>>out.  My instincts, however, are that getting the interested parties in a 
>>room for a few hours would be the most effective way to drive this to an 
>>early resolution.
>>
>>Allen Luniewski
>>IBM Information Management Division
>>San Jose, California
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>Christopher Jordan <ctjordan at sdsc.edu> 
>>03/27/2006 05:28 PM
>>
>>To
>>Osamu Tatebe <o.tatebe at aist.go.jp>
>>cc
>>Arun Jagatheesan <arun at sdsc.edu>, Manuel Pereira 
>><mpereira at almaden.ibm.com>, Andrew Grimshaw <grimshaw at cs.virginia.edu>, 
>>Mark Morgan <mmm2a at virginia.edu>, Dave Berry <daveb at nesc.ac.uk>, Allen 
>>Luniewski <luniew at almaden.ibm.com>, Christopher Jordan 
>><ctjordan at sdsc.edu>, Hiro Kishimoto <hiro.kishimoto at jp.fujitsu.com>, Ian 
>>Foster <foster at mcs.anl.gov>, Gregory Newby <newby at arsc.edu>, 
>>gfs-wg at ggf.org, ogsa-naming-wg at ggf.org
>>Subject
>>GGF/OGSA standards for hierarchical namespaces
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>
>>All,
>>
>>Forgive the wide distribution on this e-mail, but this issue seems to 
>>be to be both extraordinarily important to the future of GGF/OGSA 
>>standards efforts and also in a state of either limbo or paralysis. 
>>The topic I'm addressing here, both in my capacity as the secretary 
>>of GFS-WG and as a generally interested participant on a few 
>>different GGF working groups, is the question of adopting a single, 
>>possibly minimal, standard for creating hierarchically organized 
>>collections of pointers (WS-Names? GSR/GSHs, to date myself?) to 
>>"resources", where the term "resource" could denote a service 
>>providing access to a collection of files, computational resources, 
>>or database records (that's a non-exclusive list), and where some 
>>items in the hierarchy could actually represent directory-like 
>>structures, i.e. containers for other collections of resources.
>>
>>The way I got involved in this discussion through the Grid File 
>>Systems-WG, which at the time was bringing the RNS specification 
>>forward for final approval as a GFD. Subsequently, there have been 
>>numerous discussions outside of the GFS-WG context about the 
>>suitability of the RNS standard for more general applications, as 
>>well as the (perceived) complexity of the standard as a barrier to 
>>entry. There have also been alternative directory construction 
>>standards proposed by members of the OGSA-Naming-WG.
>>
>>The following are the activities/proposals I know of:
>>
>>RNS: I know the GGF editors have returned the final(?) RNS draft to 
>>GFS-WG, with the suggestion that it is too specific to filesystem 
>>needs, and the suggestion that it either be limited in scope to GFS 
>>applications only (a non-optimal solution for obvious reasons) or 
>>that the authors work with the OGSA-Naming people to help develop a 
>>universal standard for hierarchical resource namespaces. If we are to 
>>move forward with RNS, one of these options will clearly be a 
>>necessity, given the points Greg Newby made in his responses on 
>>behalf of the GFSG.
>>
>>WS-Directory: This is the hierarchical namespace standard developed 
>>at UVa in response to their difficulty in implementing the 
>>complexities and ambiguities in RNS. I like the simplicity of WS- 
>>Directory, however it seems to be missing significant requirements 
>>for general use such as attributes, both attributed which should be 
>>required such as time-to-live, and the ability to add extensibility 
>>attributes such as resource type, QoS, etc. This ability to add 
>>arbitrary attributes is present in RNS but it still lacks some 
>>obviously fundamental required attributes.
>>
>>Finally, Dave Berry sent an e-mail immediately after GGF16 in which 
>>he mentioned the suggestion that we separate this functionality into 
>>two logical functions, and therefore standards - a Directory 
>>Interface and an Iterator interface, in which Directory interfaces 
>>were essentially just pointers to Iterators, which would be 
>>standardized. However, there would be no restriction that a Directory 
>>point to a particular type of iterator interface. One point I wasn't 
>>clear on from the e-mail was whether an entry in an interator could 
>>be another directory, although I suspect it can.
>>
>>This short list is what I've got within easy reach. As I said 
>>previously, I believe this is an important issue to resolve quickly, 
>>and I'm sending this note in the hopes of initiating the conversation 
>>among as many of the relevant parties as I can. Please feel free to 
>>forward at will, respond with agreement, anger, or even unconcealed 
>>rage.
>>
>>Possible ways forward would be for us to have a conference call (GFS- 
>>WG meets rarely, and we could quite easily give up our call for a 
>>more focused discussion of these issues), an extended e-mail 
>>discussion, or a meeting at the next GGF (assuming we get a chance).
>>
>>Let me know how you feel about the options presented above, or feel 
>>free to propose new ones if you like. The important thing is that we 
>>begin to gain momentum, and then keep it going forward.
>>
>>Thanks.
>>
>>N.B. For anyone who may have missed any of the discussions reference 
>>above, please let me know and I'll be happy to forward them to you 
>>from my archives.
>>
>>- ----------------------------------------------------
>>Chris Jordan
>>HPC Systems Engineer
>>High End Computing Systems Group
>>San Diego Supercomputer Center
>>ctjordan at sdsc.edu
>>858.534.8347
>>
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> 
> 
> Dr. Gregory Newby, Chief Scientist (Acting), Arctic Region Supercomputing Ctr
> Univ of Alaska Fairbanks-909 Koyukuk Dr-PO Box 756020-Fairbanks-AK 99775-6020
> e: newby AT arsc.edu v: 907-450-8663 f: 907-450-8603 w: www.arsc.edu/~newby
> 
> 
>