[ogsa-wg] RE: GRIDtoday Edition: Tony Hey: 'Challenging Times for GGF & Standards'
Hiro Kishimoto
hiro.kishimoto at jp.fujitsu.com
Thu Mar 3 17:14:51 CST 2005
Tony's email bounced.
Tony: You can read whole mail threads triggered by your article at;
http://www-unix.gridforum.org/mail_archive/ogsa-wg/2005/02/threads.html
http://www-unix.gridforum.org/mail_archive/ogsa-wg/2005/03/threads.html
There are more opinions than you've already read.
----
Hiro Kishimoto
Subject: RE: [ogsa-wg] RE: GRIDtoday Edition: Tony Hey: 'Challenging Times for
GGF & Standards'
Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2005 11:37:06 -0000
From: "Tony Hey" <Tony.Hey at epsrc.ac.uk>
Dear OGSA WG members and others,
I am interested by this debate (obviously) but fear that
I did not get my essential point across. Let me try once more - sinc
e I think this is a crucial decision point for the whole GGF and Cyberinfr
astructure
effort.
First, to reassure Dave Snelling and others, I am NOT
trying to endorse 'proprietary' proposals such as WS-Transfer from Microsoft;
nor am I trying to impede the progress of WSRF etc through OASIS.
IBM and others have indeed acted as I had urged and submitted their p
roposals to a
recognized standards body.
Second, the point is not about whether one can implement
WSRF in .Net technologies. I respect the work of Marty Humphrey and h
is team but this also is not the point at issue.
The point is not about how well the WS-RF and WS-Trans
fer stacks compare but rather whether it is always appropriate to use the
"messages are directed at single resources" approach? Many people, includi
ng people whose technical judgement I respect such as Tony Storey,
Ian Foster, Dave Snelling and others, apparently believe that the answ
er to this question is "everywhere: it is the foundation for all op
erations on all services". It is therefore not surprising that this group
do not see the need to worry about the question "is it a good idea
to build architecture around the idea of sending messages to single
resources?"
In fact, although I am clearly not an implementor, I t
hink that this is not a closed issue. People whose technical judgement I a
lso respect - such as Jim Gray, Pat Helland and Andy Herbert (yes, a
ll from Microsoft but wait for the supporting cast) - believe that this
is not a good way to build robust wide area, inter enterprise distributed sy
stems. I understand why opinions from 'Microsoft' may be viewed wit
h suspicion but in this case I think their views are deeply held
matters of principle. Andy Herbert, for example, is from Microsoft Re
search and spent a long time trying to make distributed systems lik
e CORBA work. He came to the conclusion that while CORBA was just fine
for local area networks it encouraged a style of programming for wide a
rea networks that led to such implementations being 'brittle'. Thus I
believe that they think that while something like WSRF may be fine
for use within corporate computing centers behind corporate firewalls, this
approach to building distributed systems will not lead to robust wide
area implementations. (I hope Andy and the others cited will
either support
or correct my interpretation of their views.)
So I think this is not a small matter of WSRF versus
WS-Transfer. This view is supported by others in the distributed computing
community - not only people like Paul Watson, Savas Parastatidis and Jim
Webber, but also professional database people like Dave Pearson from O
racle who I believe has concerns that in an inter enterprise computing
context, many companies will not wish to expose details of their datab
ases to open
scrutiny.
What changed for me recently was the realisation
after months of trying to persuade Microsoft to engage with GGF/OGSA/WSRF
that this issue was actually a matter of principle and that there
was no prospect of Microsoft being able to join the WSRF bandwagon or
of their 'morphing' their ideas to be compatible. This being the
case - and it was confirmed for me by the OGSA-UK meeting I referred
to - and recognizing that the non-WSRF folks might, just might, be
proved correct in the long run, at least for certain types of e-Scien
ce applications, then for GGF to tie its 'flagship' OGSA to this approa
ch to resources by mandating the WSRF route would be to take an unnecessary
high risk with our user community. Such a route would also be highly
likely to effectively exclude Microsoft from GGF and hinder their pl
aying any positive role in GGF, Grids and Cyberinfrastructure.
In addition, speaking as someone with responsibility for t
he UK e-Science applications people, I can state categorically tha
t they are not interested in religious debates about how the distribu
ted systems they rely on have been implemented. They just want the
underlying distributed middleware to work and for GGF to concentrate
on delivering timely and high level standards that will assist them in
constructing their interoperable Cyberinfrastructure. They absolutely do no
t want to be forced to choose between an 'IBM' camp and a 'Micro
soft' camp - they just want a standard on which they can build higher le
vel standards and APIs. They want to be insulated from any low-level dispu
tes about how to
fix the plumbing.
So that's it folks. I believe it really is a crucial
time for GGF to show that it is really an open standards body dedicated
to delivering useful standards for users - rather than backing one bra
nch of a religious debate right down at the plumbing level that i
ts user community does not want to know about. However, is it
possible to define OGSA in such a way that it does not mandate the WSRF
approach to resources? Well I have talked with Andrew Grimshaw and o
thers and Andrew believes that this might indeed be possible. I would the
refore ask you to be open-minded and assist such an investigation.
Obviously the first implementations of OGSA will be WSRF
based and I expect many UK projects will be very happy to adopt WS
RF, GT4 and a WSRF version of OGSA-DAI. What about a non-WSRF implementation?
All I know is that Paul, Savas and Jim investigated alternative, non-WSRF
ways of providing OGSA-like functionality in a small UK project -
but I suspect that the final word has not yet been said on how to
provide such
implementations.
I do not want to de-rail WSRF - as I said it will
certainly be adopted by many UK projects. I just want GGF/OGSA to leave the
door open - so that if it does turn out that the WSRF way is not
so good for inter enterprise applications - then GGF and OGSA are not made
obsolete. Ian often asks me why the UK are so keen on Web Services
. I used to reply that Web Services were significant only because Microsoft
and IBM had agreed to agree - the Men In Black philosophy. Following
this philosophy it is surely self-evident that GGF, Grids and the whole
Cyberinfrastructure agenda would be much, much stronger if
both Microsoft and IBM were engaged. This is why giving some
space between OGSA and specific implementations using WSRF is so importa
nt.
I should end by noting that these are my own opinions.
Furthermore, the people I have explicitly cited may or may not agree wi
th the opinions I
have attributed to them.
I hope at least that my views and intentions are now
clear.
Tony
-----Original Message----- From: Frank Siebenlist [mailto:franks at mcs.anl.gov]
Sent: 01 March 2005 07:08
To: Ian Foster Cc: Dennis Gannon; Samuel Meder; ogsa-wg; Tony Hey
Subject: Re: [ogsa-wg] RE: GRIDtoday Edition: Tony Hey: 'C
hallenging
Times for GGF & Standards'
So... if ws-transfer and ws-properties are sets of convent
ions that do essentially the same thing, then it's actually a great c
ompliment to ogsa's choice of wsrf that MS decided that it needs a
similar
functionality!
Do I understand that Tony essentially asks the OGSA-WG t
o come up with an additional abstraction layer that allows one to model
the usage patterns such that it can map to either wsrf or ws-tra
nsfer
implementations?
...but if we model the usage patterns with wsrf, and w
srf and ws-transfer are doing conceptually the same thing, isn't t
he ogsa-wg doing just that: it uses an abstraction that can be us
ed to describe the relevant usage patterns without losing any generality.
The idea of inventing "yet an other abstraction layer" d
oesn't sound
very productive.
-Frank.
Ian Foster wrote:
> Dennis:
>
> I'm not sure that the "we don't need WSRF" is th
>e
heart of the debate.
> If it was, then I think things are fairly clear:=2
>0W
SRF is just some
> conventions for the messages that you send to do c
>er
tain things (e.g.,
> getResourceProperty to get state, Terminate to destroy=2
>0s
omething, or
> whatever the names are) in a WS context. If you
>do
n't have those
> conventions, then everyone ends up defining their own,
>
so that e.g. a
> job management interface might have "getJobStatus" and=2
>0"
destroyJob", a
> file transfer interface might have "getTransferStatus" a
>nd
> "destroyTransfer". This lack of consistency just makes=2
>0l
ife difficult,
> without providing any benefits.
>
> The debate with MS, as I understand it, seems to=2
>0r
ather relate to the
> fact that they are promoting a *different* set of
>co
nventions for
> doing similar things, e.g., WS-Transfer instead of
WS-ResourceProperties.
>
> Ian.
>
>
>
> At 10:23 PM 2/28/2005 -0500, Dennis Gannon wrote:
>
>> hi Sam,
>> i don't think MS has any orchestrated view on WSR
>>F
at all (but i may
>> be wrong.) I think it is more the case that
>>th
ere are people working
>> on grid standards (outside of microsoft) that feel
>>th
at what exists
>> in the ws-spec world is sufficient. hence if there
>>20
is any onus, it is
>> on those folks to show us that this is true. =2
>>0w
hat tony is saying is
>> that users, i.e. application builders, should not hav
>>e
to deal with
>> these details. The should see clearly defined OGSA
>>se
rvices and they
>> should have an easy to understand set of interactio
>>n
patterns to use
>> these services to build thier applications. the OG
>>SA
point of view
>> is that to be precise in the definition of these
>>20
behavior patterns
>> requires a framework like wsrf.
>>
>> i actually feel that these things can all coexist.
>>20
but from the
>> politics of "what is simple", we seem to live in
>>20
interesting times.
>>
>> dennis
>>
>> On Mon, 28 Feb 2005, Samuel Meder wrote:
>>
>> > On Mon, 2005-02-28 at 14:38 -0800, Frank Siebenli
>>st
wrote:
>> > > Could anyone summarize MS' WS-view, and how i
>>t
differs from WSRF?
>> >
>> > So far I have not seen any substantial differen
>>ce
between the two
>> > approaches and I definitely believe the onus is=2
>>0o
n MS to show why
>> people
>> > should adopt their proprietary specifications vs. a
>>do
pting
>> > something that is being developed in a open sta
>>nd
ards body, is
>> > getting very close to a 1.0 version and has m
>>ul
tiple
implementations behind it.
>> >
>> > /Sam
>> >
>> > >
>> > > Thanks, Frank.
>> > >
>> > >
>> > >
>> > > Hiro Kishimoto wrote:
>> > >
>> > > >Hi all,
>> > > > > > >Absorbing article by Tony Hey.
>> > > >
>> > > >http://news.tgc.com/nview.jsp?appid=3D360&print=3D1#342708
>> <http://news.tgc.com/nview.jsp?appid=3D360&print=3D1#342708>
>> > > >----
>> > > >Hiro Kishimoto
>> > > >
>> > > >
>> > > >
>> > > >>
GRIDtoday
>> > > >> NEWS AND INFOR
>>MA
TION FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY
>> > > >>
>>
--- February 28, 2005: Vol. 4, No. 8 ---
>> > > >>
>> > > >>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>> > > >>SPECIAL FEATURES
>> > > >>=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
>>=3D
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
>> > > >>
>> > > >>[ ] M342708 ) WSRF? WS-*? Where is GGF's
>>20
OGSA Headed?
>> > > >> By Tony Hey
>>,
Contributing Editor
>> > > >>
>> > > >> Tony Hey, director of e-Science for the
>>
Engineering and
>> > > >>Physical Science Research Council, continues to
>>
elaborate the
>> > > >>need for open standards in the realm of W
>>eb
services-based Grid
>> > > >>computing. He discusses the great debate of=2
>>0W
SRF vs. WS-*, and
>> > > >>lays out what the
>> > GGF
>> > > >>must do with OGSA in order to give e-Scie
>>nc
e application
>> > > >>developers something to rally around.
>> > > >>
>> > > >>
>> > > >
>> > > >
>> > > >
>> > >
>> > --
>> > Sam Meder <meder at mcs.anl.gov>
>> > The Globus Alliance - University of Chicago
>> > 630-252-1752
>> >
>> >
>> >
>
> _______________________________________________________________
> Ian Foster =2
>0
www.mcs.anl.gov/~foster
> <http://www.mcs.anl.gov/%7Efoster>
> Math & Computer Science Div. Dept of Computer Sci
>en
ce
> Argonne National Laboratory The University of Chic
>ag
o
> Argonne, IL 60439, U.S.A. Chicago, IL 60637,
>
U.S.A.
> Tel: 630 252 4619 Fax:=2
>06
30 252 1997
> Globus Alliance, www.globus.org <http:
>//
www.globus.org/>
>
-- Frank Siebenlist franks at mcs.
anl.gov The Globus Alliance - Argonne National Laboratory
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