A Grid-based Tax Filer
Application©
B. Ramamurthy
Copyright 2003
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Copyright B.Ramamurthy
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Introduction
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When we look at some of the applications discussed in publications we find
many of them are e-science, and e-business that are “back office” applications
not directly impacting the public.
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Astronomy
Bioinformatics
Environmental Science
Particle Physics
These are high performance or high throughput applications.
How about applications that simplify life for common people? For example, tax
filing?
What can grid offer that other technology cannot to solve this category of
problem?
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Virtualization
Virtual Organization concept
Federation of information
Trust model offered through certificate authority
Similar to how a credit card is accepted without any question by many vendors, gridenabled participant will honor and process a request from a customer with certified
credentials.
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Topics for Discussion
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Virtual Organization: New Notation
Grid High Trust Computing (GHTC)
(pronounced gutsy)
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Community Applications and Challenges
High Trust Application Model
Case Study: 1040 EZ tax filing
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GHTC Model and Implementation
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Virtual Organization: New
Notation
Registry
Factory
Hosting
Environment
Factory
HandleMap
.
.
.
Factory
Service
Basic service
Service
Service
….
Complex service
E2E service
Needs to be developed and refined further: grid application development environment.
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Grid High Trust Computing
(GHTC)
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Grid has its origins in cluster computing that
caters to High Performance Computing (HPC)
space.
Clusters such as Condor specifically were
designed to address High Throughput needs.
Trust model of the grid became its core
component due to the openness and the
scale of operations spanning many
heterogeneous organizations.
GHTC exploits the high trust which is a builtin capability available with the grid.
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Copyright B.Ramamurthy
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Community Applications and
Challenges
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We will characterize community applications
as those that serve the needs of common
people without them explicitly using a
computer to execute a program!
It can be anything from ordering a pizza to
book the best airline ticket to fly out for
winter vacation using an ordinary phone.
Consider the airline ticket purchase to analyze
the challenges.
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.. Challenges
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User interface can be any device accessible to user.
Identify the user without any explicit request.
Gather user information based on the identity.
Make decisions and selections to come up with best
solution based on user profile.
Determine payment methods based on the user
information and complete transaction.
Notify user if such a notification was requested.
(Push or pull notification!!)
Lets analyze and list the organizations (VOs)
involved.
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High Trust Application Model
Bank VO
Airline Consortium VO
Bank Branch
Bank Branch
VO
VO
Airline VO
Airline
VO
VO
GRID
Personal Information VO
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Personal
Personal
VO
VO
Employer VO
Department
Department
VO
VO
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Tax Filing Case Study
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You will all agree that Tax Filing
qualifies to be a community application.
If the process is simplified it will relieve
millions of people of drudgery and save
them time and money both for the
government and the people.
Lets analyze process, VO hierarchy and
the GHTC application model.
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Copyright B.Ramamurthy
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Processes and Resources
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Personal identification
Banking information/databases
Employment information/databases
IRS information resources/databases
Computational resources
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VO Hierarchy
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Credit Card VO
Bank VO
Business VO
IRS VO
Computation service VO: To populate
information collected in a form and
compute the taxes and complete the
filing process.
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Grid-based Tax Filing
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User swipes card at a gas station and answers YES to
File Tax Return.
Tax filer application is initiated on behalf of the
person. Credentials are assigned based on
authorization level from the user and the application
hosting organization.
These credentials are presented to gather
information from various VOs listed in slide 11.
The tax details are computed and filed.
User gets a notification if he/she had requested.
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