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The aim of this tutorial is to enhance awareness and exploitation of existing and emerging Grid middleware. In particular we promote the leverage of Web Service technologies to build distributed, resource-sharing applications using the Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA). We share our experience of building a production quality e-Science application using the Globus Toolkit 3.0 (GT3) to encourage wider adoption and further development of this and other OGSA based middleware.
We also aim to highlight the limitations and future challenges for such middleware based on our experience working with early manifestations of the OGSA specification.
The tutorial will provide a concise overview of Grid middleware, the motivation and principles that drive Grid technologies and the characteristics that make Grid middleware distinct from other paradigms such as J2EE and .NET. Participants will learn how the Open Grid Service Architecture (OGSA) extends existing Grid paradigms to harness emerging Web service technologies such as SOAP and WSDL. The tutorial will enable participants to create simple OGSA services using the Globus Toolkit 3.0 (GT3) implementation and deploy these services over a distributed network. Participants will learn how legacy code such as Fortran binaries can be refactored and integrated into a Grid network by wrapping code in discrete OGSA services. Participants will learn about the practical and political problems encountered when developing Grid software in a network owned and administered by different departments and/or organizations.
We anticipate that the tutorial will attract two audiences: participants already familiar with Web services middleware who are interested to find out about Grid technologies and participants familiar with previous Grid standards wanting to learn about OGSA and the Globus Toolkit 3.0. We also think that the tutorial will interest delegates who are considering deployment of an OGSA implementation and would like to learn from our experience of developing a fully productive application using the Globus Toolkit.
We will aim to keep learning pre-requisites to a minimum. We will run an optional morning session that will cover a number of background Grid technologies assuming no knowledge at all.
The main speakers at the OGSA tutoral will be Ben Butchart and Clovis Chapman from the Department of Computer Science, University College London. The optional morning background session will be led by Martin Keegan (NIEeS).
Ben Butchart and Clovis Chapman are both Research Fellows at University College London and have experience both in industry and academic research working with middleware technologies such as J2EE, JXTA, XML and Web Services. They are currently involved in a project to re-engineer an existing computational chemistry application to operate in a Grid environment using early releases of the Globus Toolkit 3.0. This has provided valuable practical experience of deploying an OGSA application in a production environment.
Martin Keegan is the technical coordinator of the NIEeS.
| 10.30-11.00 | Registration and coffee |
| 11.00-12.30 | Grid background optional tutorial |
| 12.30-1.30 | Lunch |
| 1.00-1.30 | Registration for those only attending afternoon session |
| 1.30-2.30 | OGSA session 1: Introduction and Outline (5 min) What is the Grid? (10 min) Overview of Grid middleware (15 min) Open Grid Service Architecture (20 min) Case Study: potential of Grid for improving the crystal prediction application (10 min) Questions and discussion (10 min) |
| 2.30-3.20 | OGSA session 2: Globus Tookit 3.0 Core Design (15 min) Case Study: example creating an OGSA service (live demo) (15 min) Questions and discussion (20 min) |
| 3.20-3.40 | Tea/coffee break |
| 3.40-5.00 | OGSA session 3: Wrapping Legacy code (10 min) Case Study: example wrapping a Fortran binary (10 min) Higher Level Globus Toolkit Features (15 min) Case Study: live demo of the crystal polymorph prediction tool (15 min) Case Study: analysis of system behaviour and resource usage (15 min) Questions and discussion (15 min) |
| 5.00-5.15 | OGSA session 4: Lessons learnt and future challenges (10 min) Conclusion and Summary (5 min) |
The workshop will take place in the Centre for Mathematical Sciences, Cambridge. Details of the location, including travel plans, can be obtained here.
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There is no registration charge, but we need to ask people to pre-register. This can be done using our on-line form. Please book early, because we need to have early estimates of numbers for catering and logistics planning. |
For information about registration, and all other types of queries, please contact the NIEeS office in the first instance.
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