[saga-rg] BOUNCE saga-rg at ggf.org: Non-member submission from ["Rosa M. Badia" <rosab at ac.upc.edu>] (fwd)

Wed Jan 25 11:35:10 CST 2006

Bounced message from Rosa below. Interesting perspective. 

Shantenu 

PS: My own $0.02 coming soon....

Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 18:23:11 +0100
From: "Rosa M. Badia" <rosab at ac.upc.edu>
To: Craig Lee <craig at rushg.aero.org>
Cc: Simple API for Grid Applications WG <saga-rg at ggf.org>
Subject: Re: [saga-rg] Fwd (s.newhouse at omii.ac.uk): Re: SAGA - WG?

Last November I acted as reviewer in a project, and they stated that they
have not taken into account SAGA because it is a RG and there was very few
(or no?) industry involved. They also claimed that as RG the results were
coming to slowly.

Becoming a WG can of course attract users from projects and industry, I 
do not know if it will attract more effort at the implementation level too.

Just to give a use-case :-)

Best regards,

Rosa

Craig Lee wrote:

>
> All,
>
> First of all, allow me to say that this is a good problem to have.
> The fact that the GFSG is considering whether SAGA should
> be one WG or an umbrella RG for multiple WGs means that
> people view it as important.
>
> My personal opinion is that the SAGA-RG could continue as
> this umbrella organization, but to follow through with the
> original SAGA intent, an initial WG should be formed that is
> focused on _S_AGA.  To emphasize the _simple_ in
> SAGA I keep coming back to the analogy of "the six calls
> in MPI".  Whether the current SAGA API is simple enough
> is separate discussion.  In any case, the API should be
> (a) minimally complete, (b) easy for implementers to implement
> and (c) easy for new grid users to use.
>
> As long as the umbrella SAGA-RG persists, it can consider
> issues of enhancing the API in various functional areas,
> e.g., data movement, and also establishing a common
> look-and-feel across them all.  WGs could be spun-off
> as necessary.
>
> Just my 2 cents.
>
> --Craig
>
> At 10:13 AM 1/24/2006, Andre Merzky wrote:
>
>> Dear group,
>>
>> as you know, we are currently in transition from a GGF
>> Research Group to a GGF Working Group, which will enable
>> us to submit documents into the standardization track.
>> The last action from our side was to submit the proposed
>> WG charter to our Area Directors (Steven and Dieter), and
>> wait for the last step in the process, the GFSG approval of
>> that charter.
>>
>> Below you find the answer we got from the GFSG.  I know
>> people will have strong opinions about that, both positive
>> and negative (well, certainly I do anyway :-P ), so we would
>> like to discuss the GFSG answer on this list.  It would be
>> favourable to come to a group internal conclusion, and a
>> solid opinion, about the groups future before GGF16 - that
>> means within the next two weeks.
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>>   your friendly group chairs ;-)
>>
>>
>>
>> ----- Forwarded message from Steven Newhouse <s.newhouse at omii.ac.uk> 
>> -----
>>
>> > Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 07:38:45 +0000
>> > From: Steven Newhouse <s.newhouse at omii.ac.uk>
>> > To: Andre Merzky <andre at merzky.net>, Shantenu Jha <s.jha at ucl.ac.uk>,
>> >       Tom Goodale <goodale at cct.lsu.edu>
>> > CC: Dieter Kranzlmueller <dk at gup.jku.at>
>> > Subject: Re: SAGA - WG?
>> >
>> > Dear Andre, Shantenu & Tom,
>> >
>> > At the GFSG meeting last week, there was a general discussion as to 
>> how
>> > GFSG should/could steer the standards areas to increase the impact of
>> > GGF. One of the discussions related to the Applications area and 
>> how we
>> > (as Area Directors) could help to structure the activity to align work
>> > with activities in the Architecture (i.e. OGSA) area.
>> >
>> > There was considerable interest from the rest of the GFSG in the SAGA
>> > activities and the potential uptake that the generation of stable
>> > client-side interfaces (and potentially command line tools that 
>> build on
>> > these interfaces) could provide. The GFSG saw SAGA-RG as an important
>> > step forward for grids being adopted by the wider community.
>> >
>> > That's the good news!
>> >
>> > We mentioned the pending SAGA-WG charter and that this was the next 
>> step
>> > to move things forward. Some concern was expressed about focus and 
>> broad
>> > scope. Especially as other domains would like to bring forward 
>> their own
>> > domains (data access, data movement, etc) for client side API
>> > standardisation.
>> >
>> > One proposed solution to this is that SAGA-RG stays as it is. It is
>> > doing very valuable work collecting use cases, developing the strawman
>> > API that supports these use cases and discussing implementation issues
>> > through real experience. However, clearly there are elements within 
>> the
>> > strawman that are ready to move to the next level.
>> >
>> > It is proposed that these aspects should be developed as standalone 
>> WG's
>> > starting with a common look and feel, and then picking up on (say) 
>> jobs
>> > & file movement to drive some domain specific applications of the 
>> common
>> > look and feel. The result would be an umbrella-RG (SAGA) with a set of
>> > coupled WGs for the different aspects.
>> >
>> > So there are two ways forward - you have _our_ support which ever way
>> > _you_ choose to go forward.
>> >
>> > If you go forward with then the current charter then you will need 
>> to be
>> > explicit as to which areas you will be doing (to allow space for other
>> > WG's to come forward), i.e. you need to define your API scope. 
>> Elements
>> > of the API will change at different rates and putting this all into 
>> one
>> > specification adds to its complexity. Small tightly focussed
>> > specifications have had much greater success within GGF. This may be
>> > something else to consider.
>> >
>> > As a conclusion we hope that you will think about this great 
>> opportunity
>> > to take the responsibility for the bigger picture, and that you will
>> > adapt your plans accordingly from this feedback. We would certainly be
>> > available to support you in this quest. At the same time, it has also
>> > been agreed to continue the regular bit-flipping procedure with your
>> > charter, should you insist on your currently proposed approach.
>> >
>> > Steven & Dieter
>> -- 
>> +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
>> | Andre Merzky                      | phon: +31 - 20 - 598 - 7759 |
>> | Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU) | fax : +31 - 20 - 598 - 7653 |
>> | Dept. of Computer Science         | mail: merzky at cs.vu.nl       |
>> | De Boelelaan 1083a                | www:  http://www.merzky.net |
>> | 1081 HV Amsterdam, Netherlands    |                             |
>> +-----------------------------------------------------------------+
>

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                Rosa M. Badia
                                Dept. Computer Architecture
                                Universitat Politecnica Catalunya
                                Campus Nord - Modul D6
                                c/Jordi Girona 1-3
                                E08034 - Barcelona

                                http://personals.ac.upc.edu/rosab/

                                Tel. +34 - 934017191
                                Fax: +34 - 934017055
------------------------------------------------------------------------