UK e-Science Technical Report Series
ISSN 1751-5971
GridNet2 Final Report
EPSRC/JISC
Principal Investigator: Prof Malcolm Atkinson
Co-Investigator: Dr Anna Kenway
Edited by Katharine Woods
31-Jul-2008
Abstract:
GridNet2 was designed to fund travel and attendance for standards work in the international
e-Science community, extending the UK's influence and seeking to ensure the needs of the
UK's e-Infrastructure were incorporated into the developing standards. GridNet2 members
participated at all levels, as leaders of and contributors to the working, research and
community groups in the Standards Development Organisations (SDOs), in the international
e-Science and Grid communities, driving standards development forward and promoting this
work in the academic, public and industrial sectors.
As a condition of receiving funding, GridNet2 members were required to write reports on the
SDO meetings and conferences that they were funded to attend. This report collates all the
individual reports and contains summary data for each GridNet2 member based on those
reports. It also contains summary data for GridNet2 as a whole, including lists of publications,
participation in standards work by area, events, and financial awards by individual and
institution. The report also reviews the management and administration of GridNet2.
UK e-Science Technical Report Series
Report UKeS-2008-04
Available from http://www.nesc.ac.uk/technical_papers/UKeS-2008-04.pdf
Copyright © 2008 The University of Edinburgh. All rights reserved.
Funded By:
Start Date:
End Date:
EPSRC (EP/D022169/1) and JISC
1st August 2005
30th April 2008
Contents
Contents
1
GridNet2 Summary.......................................................................... 10
1.1
GridNet2 Background ................................................................... 10
1.2
GridNet2 Aims............................................................................. 10
1.3
GridNet2 Administration ............................................................... 11
1.3.1
GridNet2 Investigators........................................................... 11
1.3.2
GridNet2 Advisory Board ........................................................ 12
1.3.3
GridNet2 Management ........................................................... 13
1.4
2
GridNet2 Achievements ................................................................ 14
GridNet2 Member Summaries ......................................................... 19
2.1
Mr Oluwafemi Ajayi – NeSC .......................................................... 20
2.2
Dr Mario Antonioletti – EPCC......................................................... 20
2.3
Prof Malcolm Atkinson – NeSC ...................................................... 21
2.4
Prof Mark Baker – Reading ........................................................... 23
2.5
Dr Dave Berry – NeSC ................................................................. 23
2.6
Prof David Chadwick – Kent.......................................................... 24
2.7
Mr Xiaoyu Chen – Brunel.............................................................. 26
2.8
Mr Andrew Cooper – Oxford ......................................................... 26
2.9
Dr Thierry Delaitre – Westminster ................................................. 27
2.10
Dr Abdeslem Djaoui – STFC ...................................................... 27
2.11
Mr Donal Fellows – Manchester .................................................. 28
2.12
Dr Steve Fisher – STFC............................................................. 29
2.13
Mr Andrew Harrison - Cardiff ..................................................... 30
2.14
Mr Chris Higgins – Edinburgh .................................................... 30
2.15
Mr Neil Chue Hong – OMII-UK ................................................... 31
2.16
Dr Richard Hughes-Jones – Manchester ...................................... 32
2.17
Dr Jens Jensen – STFC ............................................................. 33
2.18
Dr Shantenu Jha – UCL............................................................. 34
2.19
Mr Jipu Jiang – NeSC................................................................ 35
2.20
Dr Mike Jones – Manchester ...................................................... 35
2.21
Mr Ian Kelley – Cardiff.............................................................. 36
2.22
Dr Amrey Krause – Edinburgh ................................................... 37
2.23
Mr William Lee – Imperial ......................................................... 38
2.24
Mr Mark Leese – STFC .............................................................. 39
2.25
Dr Stephen McGough – Imperial ................................................ 40
2.26
Dr Andrew Martin – Oxford ....................................................... 41
Page 3
Contents
2.27
Dr Steven Newhouse – OMII-UK ................................................ 42
2.28
Mr Vesselin Novov – Imperial .................................................... 43
2.29
Dr Savas Parastatidis - Newcastle .............................................. 44
2.30
Dr Colin Perkins – Glasgow ....................................................... 45
2.31
Dr Stephen Pickles – Manchester ............................................... 46
2.32
Prof Omer Rana – Cardiff .......................................................... 48
2.33
Dr Matthew Shields – Cardiff ..................................................... 49
2.34
Prof Richard Sinnott - NeSC ...................................................... 50
2.35
Mr David Spence – STFC........................................................... 51
2.36
Mr Anthony Stell – NeSC........................................................... 52
2.37
Dr Ian Taylor – Cardiff.............................................................. 53
2.38
Mr Elias Theocharopoulos – NeSC............................................... 53
2.39
Dr David Wallom – Oxford ........................................................ 54
2.40
Dr Viktor Yarmolenko – Manchester............................................ 55
2.41
Mr Stefan Zasada – UCL ........................................................... 56
2.42
Dr Ning Zhang – Manchester ..................................................... 56
3
GridNet2 Reports ............................................................................ 58
3.1
Mr Oluwafemi Ajayi – NeSC .......................................................... 58
3.1.1
GGF16 ................................................................................ 58
3.1.2
GGF18 ................................................................................ 59
3.1.3
OGF20 ................................................................................ 60
3.2
Dr Mario Antonioletti - EPCC ......................................................... 60
3.2.1
3.3
Prof Malcolm Atkinson – NeSC ...................................................... 62
3.3.1
GFSG F2F............................................................................ 62
3.3.2
GGF16 and GFSG ................................................................. 62
3.3.3
GGF17 ................................................................................ 63
3.3.4
GGF 18 ............................................................................... 64
3.3.5
OGF19 ................................................................................ 65
3.3.6
OGF20 ................................................................................ 66
3.3.7
OGF21 ................................................................................ 66
3.4
Prof Mark Baker – Reading ........................................................... 67
3.4.1
3.5
Page 4
OGF22 ................................................................................ 60
ICEAGE - Curricula Development Workshop.............................. 67
Dr Dave Berry – NeSC ................................................................. 67
3.5.1
OGSA F2F – Jan 06............................................................... 67
3.5.2
GGF16 ................................................................................ 67
3.5.3
GGF18 ................................................................................ 68
3.5.4
OGSA WG Telcons – Aug 06 ................................................... 68
Contents
3.5.5
3.6
OGF19 ................................................................................ 68
Prof David Chadwick – Kent.......................................................... 68
3.6.1
GGF14 ................................................................................ 68
3.6.2
GGF15 ................................................................................ 69
3.6.3
GGF16 ................................................................................ 69
3.6.4
GGF17 ................................................................................ 70
3.6.5
GGF18 ................................................................................ 71
3.6.6
OGF19 ................................................................................ 71
3.6.7
OGF20 ................................................................................ 73
3.6.8
OGF21 ................................................................................ 73
3.6.9
OGF22 ................................................................................ 75
3.7
Mr Xiaoyu Chen – Brunel.............................................................. 75
3.7.1
OGF21 ................................................................................ 75
3.8
Mr Andrew Cooper – OERC ........................................................... 76
3.9
Dr Thierry Delaitre – Westminster ................................................. 76
3.9.1
GGF18 ................................................................................ 76
3.10
Dr Abdeslem Djaoui – STFC ...................................................... 77
3.11
Mr Donal Fellows – Manchester .................................................. 77
3.11.1
3.12
OGF21 and OGF22 ............................................................ 77
Dr Steve Fisher – STFC............................................................. 77
3.12.1
GGF15............................................................................. 77
3.12.2
GGF16............................................................................. 80
3.12.3
GGF17............................................................................. 80
3.12.4
INFOD-WG F2F – May 06 ................................................... 82
3.12.5
GGF18............................................................................. 82
3.12.6
INFOD-WG F2F – February 07............................................. 83
3.12.7
OGF19............................................................................. 83
3.12.8
OGF20............................................................................. 83
3.12.9
OGF21............................................................................. 83
3.13
Mr Andrew Harrison – Cardiff..................................................... 84
3.13.1
OGF20............................................................................. 84
3.13.2
OGF21............................................................................. 85
3.13.3
OGF22............................................................................. 86
3.14
Mr Chris Higgins – Edinburgh .................................................... 87
3.14.1
OGC Committee Meeting – June 06...................................... 87
3.14.2
GGF18............................................................................. 87
3.14.3
OGF20............................................................................. 88
3.14.4
OGF21............................................................................. 89
Page 5
Contents
3.14.5
3.15
Mr Neil Chue Hong – OMII-UK ................................................... 91
3.15.1
OGF21............................................................................. 91
3.15.2
OGF22............................................................................. 92
3.16
Dr Richard Hughes-Jones – Manchester ...................................... 92
3.16.1
GGF15............................................................................. 92
3.16.2
OGF19............................................................................. 94
3.16.3
OGF20............................................................................. 94
3.16.4
OGF21............................................................................. 95
3.17
Dr Jens Jensen – STFC ............................................................. 96
3.17.1
3.18
OGF22............................................................................. 96
Dr Shantenu Jha – UCL............................................................. 99
3.18.1
GGF15............................................................................. 99
3.18.2
GGF16........................................................................... 100
3.18.3
GGF17........................................................................... 100
3.18.4
GGF18........................................................................... 100
3.18.5
LGC Workshop ................................................................ 100
3.18.6
SAGA Design and Implementation Meeting ......................... 101
3.18.7
ISSGC 07....................................................................... 101
3.19
Mr Jipu Jiang – NeSC.............................................................. 101
3.19.1
3.20
GGF18........................................................................... 101
Dr Mike Jones – Manchester .................................................... 102
3.20.1
GGF16........................................................................... 102
3.20.2
GGF17........................................................................... 102
3.20.3
GGF18........................................................................... 102
3.20.4
OGF20........................................................................... 103
3.20.5
OGF21........................................................................... 103
3.20.6
OGF22........................................................................... 104
3.21
Mr Ian Kelley – Cardiff............................................................ 105
3.21.1
GGF18........................................................................... 106
3.21.2
OGF20........................................................................... 106
3.21.3
OGF21........................................................................... 106
3.21.4
OGF22........................................................................... 107
3.22
Page 6
OGF22............................................................................. 89
Dr Amrey Krause – Edinburgh ................................................. 107
3.22.1
GGF16........................................................................... 107
3.22.2
GGF18........................................................................... 108
3.22.3
OGF20........................................................................... 108
3.22.4
OGF21........................................................................... 109
Contents
3.22.5
OGF22........................................................................... 110
3.23
Mr William Lee - Imperial........................................................ 110
3.24
Mr Mark Leese – STFC ............................................................ 110
3.25
Dr Stephen McGough – Imperial .............................................. 111
3.25.1
GGF14........................................................................... 111
3.25.2
GGF15 & OGSA F2F ......................................................... 111
3.25.3
GGF16 & OGSA F2F ......................................................... 112
3.25.4
GGF17........................................................................... 112
3.25.5
GGF18........................................................................... 113
3.25.6
OGF19........................................................................... 114
3.25.7
OGF20........................................................................... 115
3.25.8
OGF21........................................................................... 118
3.25.9
OGF22........................................................................... 120
3.25.10
OGSA F2F (12) ............................................................... 123
3.25.11
OGSA F2F (13) ............................................................... 123
3.25.12
OGSA F2F (14) ............................................................... 123
3.25.13
OGSA F2F (15) ............................................................... 123
3.25.14
OGSA F2F (17) ............................................................... 124
3.25.15
OGSA F2F (18) ............................................................... 125
3.25.16
OGSA F2F (19) ............................................................... 126
3.25.17
SuperComputing ‘06 and OGSA F2F (16) ............................ 127
3.25.18
SuperComputing ‘07 ........................................................ 127
3.26
Dr Andrew Martin – Oxford ..................................................... 128
3.26.1
GGF15........................................................................... 128
3.26.2
GGF16........................................................................... 129
3.26.3
Trusted Computing Group Meeting..................................... 130
3.27
Dr Steven Newhouse – OMII-UK .............................................. 130
3.27.1
GFSG F2F – Jan 06.......................................................... 130
3.27.2
OGSA F2F – Jan 06 ......................................................... 130
3.27.3
GGF16........................................................................... 131
3.27.4
GGF17........................................................................... 131
3.28
Mr Vesselin Novov – Imperial .................................................. 132
3.29
Dr Savas Parastatidis – Newcastle............................................ 132
3.29.1
3.30
GGF14........................................................................... 132
Dr Colin Perkins – Glasgow ..................................................... 132
3.30.1
IETF64 .......................................................................... 132
3.30.2
IETF65 .......................................................................... 133
3.30.3
IETF66 .......................................................................... 134
Page 7
Contents
3.30.4
IETF67 .......................................................................... 134
3.30.5
IETF68 .......................................................................... 134
3.30.6
IETF69 .......................................................................... 135
3.30.7
IETF70 .......................................................................... 135
3.30.8
SUMOVER – Nov 05......................................................... 136
3.30.9
SUMOVER – Apr 07 ......................................................... 136
3.31
3.31.1
OGF .............................................................................. 137
3.31.2
OASIS ........................................................................... 137
3.31.3
ETSI.............................................................................. 137
3.31.4
GGF15........................................................................... 137
3.31.5
GGF16........................................................................... 137
3.31.6
GGF17........................................................................... 137
3.31.7
GGF18........................................................................... 137
3.31.8
OGF19........................................................................... 137
3.31.9
OGF20........................................................................... 137
3.31.10
GFSG F2F – Jan 06.......................................................... 137
3.31.11
GFSG F2F – Jul 06........................................................... 138
3.31.12
GFSG F2F – Dec 06 ......................................................... 138
3.31.13
OGF GIN F2F – Mar 07 ..................................................... 138
3.31.14
ETSI Meeting – Nov 06 .................................................... 138
3.32
Prof Omer Rana – Cardiff ........................................................ 138
3.32.1
GGF16........................................................................... 138
3.32.2
GGF17........................................................................... 141
3.32.3
GGF18........................................................................... 145
3.32.4
OGF19........................................................................... 148
3.32.5
OGF20........................................................................... 150
3.32.6
OGF21........................................................................... 152
3.32.7
OGF22........................................................................... 152
3.33
Dr Matthew Shields – Cardiff ................................................... 154
3.33.1
OGF20........................................................................... 154
3.33.2
OGF21........................................................................... 155
3.34
Page 8
Dr Stephen Pickles – Manchester ............................................. 136
Prof Richard Sinnott – NeSC .................................................... 156
3.34.1
GGF15........................................................................... 156
3.34.2
GGF16........................................................................... 157
3.34.3
GGF18........................................................................... 158
3.34.4
OGF20........................................................................... 159
3.34.5
OGF21........................................................................... 160
Contents
3.34.6
3.35
Mr David Spence – STFC......................................................... 162
3.35.1
3.36
Dr Ian Taylor – Cardiff............................................................ 164
GGF18........................................................................... 164
3.37.2
OGF20........................................................................... 164
3.37.3
OGF21........................................................................... 165
3.37.4
OGF22........................................................................... 165
Mr Elias Theocharopoulos - NeSC ............................................. 166
3.38.1
3.39
OGF22........................................................................... 166
Dr David Wallom – OeRC ........................................................ 167
3.39.1
GGF18........................................................................... 167
3.39.2
OGF20........................................................................... 168
3.39.3
OGF22........................................................................... 169
3.40
Dr Viktor Yarmolenko – Manchester.......................................... 172
3.40.1
3.41
3.42
SLA F2F ......................................................................... 172
Mr Stefan Zasada – UCL ......................................................... 174
3.41.1
OGF20........................................................................... 174
Dr Ning Zhang – Manchester ................................................... 175
3.42.1
OGF19........................................................................... 175
3.42.2
OGF20........................................................................... 175
GridNet2 Financial Statements...................................................... 176
A.1
B
GGF16........................................................................... 163
3.37.1
3.38
A
GGF18........................................................................... 162
Mr Anthony Stell – NeSC......................................................... 163
3.36.1
3.37
OGF22........................................................................... 161
Financial Awards and Claims....................................................... 176
Publications.................................................................................. 179
B.1
Publications with GridNet2 Authors .............................................. 179
B.2
Publications with GridNet2 Contributors........................................ 181
C
Standardisation Participation by Area .......................................... 184
D
Events .......................................................................................... 191
D.1
GridNet2 e-Science Workshop (OGF21)......................................... 193
Glossary ............................................................................................... 195
Page 9
1 GridNet2 Summary
1
GridNet2 Summary
This section provides a summary of the background, aims and achievements
of the GridNet2 project, which ran from 1st August 2005 to 30th April 2008.
1.1
GridNet2 Background
The GridNet2 project followed on from the GridNet1 project. GridNet1 was
funded by EPSRC grant GR/R74772/01 and ran from February 2002 to
February 2005.
GridNet1 allowed the UK to establish a significant influence on the
development of standards and to share best practices in e-Science
standardisation. This engagement was invaluable as the future of e-Research
and the generalisation of e-Science demanded a cost-effective, sustainable,
persistent and reliable e-infrastructure.
GridNet1 enabled the following UK contributions to the developing standards
in e-Science:
•
UK staff and activities were established in leading roles in standards
bodies.
•
UK practitioners of e-Sciences have influenced emerging standards.
•
UK researchers and developers were established within the international
e-Science community, ensuring rapid communication of ideas, best
practice and plans, which were important steps in making internationally
sustained e-Infrastructure available to the UK research community.
GridNet1 established a UK presence at the Global Grid Forum (GGF)
whereby:
•
46 people were registered and active at various GGF meetings.
•
One representative on the GFAC.
•
Five representatives on the GFSG.
•
UK leadership in 16 GGF working and research groups.
•
UK researchers had authored 9 of the 41 GGF documents published at the
time of GridNet1 ending, with many further documents underway.
Other GridNet1 achievements include community building, requirements
analysis, collaborative demonstrations, workshops, informational document
preparation, and standards specification proposals.
1.2
GridNet2 Aims
As a result of the GridNet1 achievements, the UK was in a position where it
had a greater potential influence on the GGF standards than any country
other than the USA at the start of GridNet2. The aim of GridNet2 was to build
on this potential by continuing to fund attendance at SDO meetings so that
standardisation work begun during GridNet1 could continue in GridNet2.
It was recognised that additional standardisation work was taking place
outside the usual SDO meetings, and GridNet2 needed to support these
meetings. Three examples of such meetings are as follows:
•
Page 10
Regular teleconferences (telcons) to progress standards and documents.
1 GridNet2 Summary
For example, the OGSA WG of the GGF averaged 3 telcons per week for
its subsidiary design teams, and the DAIS documents required telcons
between the authors, editors, reviewers and contributors.
•
Face-to-face (F2F) meetings, taking place over a period of 2-4 days, allow
participants to focus exclusively on the issues in developing a standard.
Such meetings require hosting or travel.
For examples of such meetings funded by GridNet2, see the following
sections:
•
•
Section 3, GridNet2 Reports
•
Appendix D, Events
Document preparation meetings where sub-groups of editors and authors
meet to consolidate the work that has been undertaken through mail lists,
web forums and F2F meetings and telcons.
GridNet2 also needed to support socialisation tours. Socialisation tours are
used to enhance the prospects for a standard to be widely adopted by visiting
relevant projects, middleware development teams and industry decision
makers.
Where standards have become of greater importance to industry and
commerce, GridNet2 funding was required, in UK interests, to keep in touch
with the progress, evaluation and assessments of these standards and their
rivals.
UK researchers and developers had obtained senior positions in various
SDOs, and GridNet2 funding was required to co-ordinate and support these
efforts so that UK investment in the SDOs had increased effect. The intention
was also to avoid extra time commitments for people already heavily involved
in standards, and reducing enthusiasm where therewas already effective
engagement, such as with JSDL and SAGA.
1.3
GridNet2 Administration
1.3.1
GridNet2 Investigators
Prof. Malcolm Atkinson, Director of the National e-Science Centre, e-Science
Institute, University of Edinburgh, was the Principal Investigator (PI) for
GridNet2. Prof Atkinson took overall financial and managerial responsibility
for GridNet2, and was responsible for the following aspects of GridNet2:
•
Providing direction and leadership
•
Co-ordinating the work of the Advisory Board for GridNet2
•
Advising on applications
•
Communicating with the UK e-Science Core Programme.
Dr Anna Kenway, Deputy Director of the National e-Science Centre, e-Science
Institute, University of Edinburgh, was the Co-Investigator for GridNet2.
Dr Kenway was responsible for the following aspects of GridNet2:
•
Appointing and supervising staff engaged on GridNet2
•
Directing and overseeing operations, such as:
•
•
Financial book-keeping
•
Web presentation
Communicating with applicants and institutions
Page 11
1 GridNet2 Summary
1.3.2
GridNet2 Advisory Board
A GridNet2 Advisory Board (GNAB2) was set up to monitor and review the
allocation process. The terms of reference for the GNAB2 included the
membership and roles. The GNAB2 membership comprised the following:
•
The director of the UK e-Science Programme or his nominee
•
Eight members selected from or nominated by the directors of the UK
e-Science Centres, Centres of Excellence and CCLRC
•
The directors of the NERC Environmental e-Science Institute, the Open
Middleware Infrastructure Institute (OMII-UK), the Digital Curation
Centre (DCC), National Grid Service (NGS) and the ESRC National Centre
for e-Social Science (NCeSS) or their nominees
•
Five of the UK staff actively engaged in UK standards efforts
•
The PI of the GridNet2 project
Table 1:
Page 12
GridNet2 Advisory Board Members
Name
Institution
Prof Malcolm Atkinson
Director National e-Science Centre, U. Edinburgh
Prof David Chadwick
Deputy Director ESNW, U. Manchester
Mr Neil Chue Hong
Director, OMII-UK
(replacement for Dr Steven Newhouse)
Prof Jon Crowcroft
U. Cambridge Computing Lab
Dr Martin Dove
Director, NIEeS, Cambridge
Mr Alex Hardisty
Manager, Welsh e-Science Centre
Prof Peter Henderson
PI OMII
Dr Shantenu Jha
Research Fellow, UCL
Prof Andy Keane
Director, Southampton e-Science Institute
Dr Stephen McGough
Technical Co-ordinator, LeSC, Imperial College
Dr Steven Newhouse
Director, OMII-UK
(replaced by Mr Neil Chue Hong)
Dr Savas Parastatidis
NEReSC and OMII
Prof Andy Parker
Director, Cambridge e-Science Centre
Prof Ron Perrott
Director, Belfast e-Science Centre
Prof Rob Procter
Director, NCeSS, U. Manchester
Dr Chris Rusbridge
Director, DCC, U. Edinburgh
Dr Richard Sinnott
Deputy Director, Glasgow NeSC
Dr Arthur Trew
Director, EPCC, U. Edinburgh
1 GridNet2 Summary
The role of the GNAB2 members was:
1.
To review applications for GridNet2 funding, as in GridNet1.
There were three anonymous reviews for each application, and reviewers
could choose one of the following responses:
•
Fund in full
•
Fund to a specified level
•
Don’t fund.
It was sometimes necessary to seek clarifications from applicants. This
was undertaken via the NeSC GridNet2 administrator. If the reviewers did
not reach agreement, a further reviewer from the GNAB2 was consulted at
the discretion of the PI. The requests for reviews were always sent to
institutions not involved in the application.
2.
To advise on policy for the allocation of GridNet2 funds and strategic
standards issues, either via the quarterly GridNet2 Access Grid (AG)
meetings or via e-mail with the GridNet2 PI.
These arrangements were reviewed and revised by the GNAB2 from time-totime, and changes were announced on the GridNet2 web pages
(http://www.nesc.ac.uk/nesc/gridnet/). The GridNet2 application, review
and reporting process was supported by web forms (for example, see
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/action/funding/fa_forma.cfm?id=2) and a database
for the applications, comments and decisions.
The GridNet2 Advisory Board held meetings in:
1.3.3
•
June 2006
•
September 2006
•
January 2007
•
May 2007
•
January 2008
•
May 2008
GridNet2 Management
In order to build on the success of GridNet1, existing activities from GridNet1
were continued in GridNet2 and new ones were added for GridNet2.
The following activities were continuations from GridNet1:
•
Appointment of the GNAB2, with a larger membership than that of
GridNet1, in order to spread the review load.
•
Wide advertising of the available GridNet2 resources to the UK
community, through the NeSC website and newsletter, directors
meetings, All Hands Meetings (AHMs), and where other opportunities
arose.
•
Continuation of the application, budget allocation and monitoring
process, including web site maintenance, database infrastructure, bookkeeping, communication and process oversight.
The following activities were new in GridNet2:
•
Tabulation of all known UK participants in relevant standards processes
and their roles
Page 13
1 GridNet2 Summary
•
Reports from all UK participants for each meeting they have attended.
For more information, see section 3, GridNet2 Reports.
•
UK Standardisation AG meetings to co-ordinate UK standards work
•
Specialist standardisation e-mail lists, web forums, AG meetings, telcons,
and F2F meetings where the need arose to develop UK strategies,
consensus or adoption of specific issues or standards
•
Support for socialisation of UK standards
•
Support for hosting (and in exceptional circumstances, attending) regular
international telcons
GridNet2 management also included the following management activities:
1.4
•
Managing the sponsorship and membership of SDOs
•
Supporting SDO steering group members
•
Fast-tracking funding requests for funding amounts up to £1000, where
an immediate response is required
GridNet2 Achievements
Table 2 gives summary data for GridNet2. Detailed breakdowns of the
information in this table are given in later sections of this report.
Table 2: GridNet2 Summary Data
Number of Awards
No.
Further Information
45
Some GridNet2 members had more than one
award.
See section 2, GridNet2 Member Summaries
Number of People
Funded
42
Some GridNet2 awards funded more than one
person.
See section 2, GridNet2 Member Summaries.
Events Supported
44
See appendix D, Events.
Roles
249
See section 2, GridNet2 Member Summaries.
Publications
59
See appendix B, Publications.
Groups
49
See appendix C, Standardisation Participation
by Area.
Number of Claims
42
There were three GridNet2 awards for which no
claims were submitted.
During the course of GridNet2, members (those who applied for and received
GridNet2 funding) participated in meetings and conferences, both F2F and via
telcons, and engaged in SDO research, community and working groups to
continue the work in developing e-Science standards. Standards have been
published, revised and extended in this period, and GridNet2 members have
undertaken socialisation work to disseminate awareness and increase uptake
of these standards in academic, research and industrial areas.
Page 14
1 GridNet2 Summary
Standards that have been a particular success during GridNet2 are the Job
Submission Description Language (JSDL) and A Simple API for Grid
Application (SAGA) standards. Many GridNet2 members have participated in
this work, with Dr Stephen McGough being extensively involved in JSDL and
Dr Shantenu Jha in SAGA.
JSDL v1.0 was published in November 2005. The work of the JSDL continued
throughout GridNet2, and the publication of JSDL v1.0 was followed by HPC
Profile Application Extension for JSDL 1.0 and the SPMD Application
Extension for JSDL v1.0, both published in August 2007. Dr Stephen
McGough is one of the authors for JSDL v1.0, and an acknowledged
contributor for the SPMD Application Extension, along with Mr Donal
Fellows, Mr William Lee and Dr Stephen Pickles. Mr Donal Fellows is also an
acknowledged contributor for the HPC Profile Extension Application. In all,
seven GridNet2 members participated in the JSDL work.
JSDL has had considerable success, as indicated by the fact that there are
more than twelve known implementations of JSDL v1.0. These
implementations, created on a variety of platforms, have been demonstrated
at the SuperComputing conferences held in 2006 and 2007. There were also
ten implementations of the HPC Profile Extension to JSDL successfully
demonstrated at SuperComputing 2006 and and 2007.
Following on from JSDL v1.0, the JSDL-WG actively sought and received
feedback on JSDL which led to the published extensions and errata for JSDL
v1.0.
In acknowledgement of the effort behind and success of JSDL, the JSDL-WG
was presented with the OGF Leadership Award at OGF20. The award is given
to individuals or groups within OGF that have demonstrated outstanding
leadership and many contributions to the OGF mission. This was a ringing
endorsement from the Grid community of the significance and value of the
completed and ongoing work of the JSDL-WG.
The SAGA-RG worked on the SAGA standard throughout the GridNet2 period,
with participation from 13 GridNet2 members, and the SAGA standard was
published in January 2008. Dr Shantenu Jha was one of the authors for this
standard, and Dr Steven Newhouse and Dr Stephen Pickles were
acknowledged contributors. This publication of the SAGA standard followed
SAGA outreach that took place at ISSGC07, which has led to an investigation
of use of SAGA as an interface for Condor.
The work of the NM-WG has also been a success, as indicated by the 29
networks worldwide that have adopted work of the group. Dr Richard
Hughes-Jones and Mr Mark Leese have been active leaders in this area and
are co-chairs of the NM-WG.
The OGSA-DAI standard has also been adopted by many groups, particularly
in Asia. Various GridNet2 members have been involved in the OGSA-DAI
project, including Prof Malcolm Atkinson, Dr Marion Antonioletti, MrNeil
Chue Hong, Dr Amrey Krause, Dr Savas Parastatidis, Prof Richard Sinnott
and Mr Elias Theocharopoulos. The OGSA-DAI project has close involvement
with the DAIS-WG at OGF, and Dr Mario Antonioletti is one of the co-chairs
of DAIS-WG. Dr Dave Berry, Dr Savas Parastatidis, Mr Neil Chue Hong, Dr
Amrey Krause and Mr Elias Theocharopoulos have also participated in the
DAIS-WG sessions at GGF/OGF meetings.
Page 15
1 GridNet2 Summary
It is not only through OGF that GridNet2 members have participated through
the development of standards that benefit UK e-Science and the increased
standing of UK e-Science in the global Grid and e-Science communities. Dr
Colin Perkins has taken an active and leading role within the IETF, cochairing both the AVT and MMUSIC working groups. Dr Perkins has also
developed a new proposal for the transport of real-time audio/visual data
using RTP over the DCCP standard. Dr Perkins has also undertaken
socialisation work for this standard and the SDP specification at SUMOVER
workshop, prior to the adoption of these standards by the IETF.
GridNet2 members have participated actively in the area of published
standards, leading and directing the development of these standards. This
leadership role has not only been in the area of published standards, but also
in sustaining the ongoing work of the standards bodies. GridNet2 members
have driven the establishment of new areas and groups within the e-Science
standards community, consolidating and extending the presence of UK
e-Science within the global community.
During the course of GridNet2, David Wallom, one of the recipients of
GridNet2 funding, was an active participant in setting up OGF-Europe. The
setting up of OGF-Europe is another significant effort that will highlight the
requirements and work of UK e-Science.
The goal of OGF-Europe is to stimulate, co-ordinate and harmonise efforts to
increase Grid adoption across Europe, and globally, through reinforcement of
the Open Standards message. This will be achieved by mobilising the Grid
European community of researchers, developers, providers, and end-users in
both the public & private sectors. OGF-Europe aims to focus on issues that are
of prime importance within the EU, ultimately increasing the ability of
industry and commerce to influence requirements for a more competitive ICT
infrastructure, built on these solid foundations. OGF-Europe will continue to
shape the broad vision while supporting practical progress on maturing and
standardising the technology based on real-world experience.
The OGF-Europe consortium has a wide and varied membership from across
Europe, but all have significant expertise, knowledge and skills to
demonstrate how Grid infrastructures are a competitive advantage in Europe.
The consortium also has significant cross linkage to the many aspects of the
management structure of the OGF-Global organisation. Major outputs of
OGF-Europe include:
•
3 reports supporting the OGF technical & strategic roadmap
•
2 survey reports on trends & Grid practices
•
4 workshops on challenges on standardisation issues
•
4 Grid adoption challenge reports
•
6 Community outreach seminars including 4 in-depth tutorials
•
6 Community best practice reports
•
2 OGF-EUROPE international events (European-based OGF events)
For more information about OGF-Europe, see:
http://www.ogfeurope.eu/
GridNet2 members have also been instrumental in chartering new groups
within OGF.
Page 16
1 GridNet2 Summary
Professor Malcolm Atkinson had a central and leading role in organising the
BoFs concentrating on Grid education at two OGF meetings. These led
directly on to the establishment of the ET-CG which has the remit to bring
together practitioners in Grid-related education and training (E&T) to share
and develop best practice, to stimulate greater investment in Grid-related
E&T and above all, to build a mutually supportive community of Grid trainers
and educators. Prof Malcolm Atkinson is one of the co-chairs of the ET-CG
and has continued to promote and drive the ET-CG agenda at OGF, as well as
working in the area of Grid education in other forums, such as the ICEAGE
project.
Another area in which GridNet2 members have taken a leading role is in the
LoA BOFs which led to the establishment of the LoA-RG. Dr Ning Zhang took
on the role of co-chair of the LOA-RG, after organising and chairing the LoA
BoF at OGF19. Dr Mike Jones has also participated in the LoA-RG. The aim of
the LoA-RG is to investigate use case scenarios in the e-Science/Grid contexts,
and identify gaps in applying existing LoA definitions to such contexts.
Table 3 lists the SDO working, community and research groups that GridNet2
members have chaired. There were 19 GridNet2 members who chaired or cochaired 20 working, research or community groups. Three GridNet2 members
chaired or co-chaired two working groups.
Table 3: GridNet2 Group Chairs
Group
Chair/Co-chair
APP-AGG-WG
Dr Ian Taylor
AVT-WG
Dr Colin Perkins
BYTEIO-WG
Mr Neil Chue Hong
DAIS-WG
Dr Mario Antonioletti
ET-CG
Prof Malcolm Atkinson
GSM-WG
Dr Jens Jensen
INFOD-WG
Dr Steven Fisher
JSDL-WG
Dr Stephen McGough
LoA-RG
Dr Ning Zhang
MMUSIC-WG
Dr Colin Perkins
NM-WG
Dr Richard Hughes-Jones
Mr Mark Leese
OGSA-Authz-WG
Prof David Chadwick
OGSA-BES-WG
Dr Steven Newhouse
OGSA-D-WG
Dr Dave Berry
OGSA-DMI-WG
Dr Mario Antonioletti
PGS-RG
Dr David Wallom
Page 17
1 GridNet2 Summary
Group
Chair/Co-chair
SAGA-RG
Dr Shantenu Jha
TC-RG
Dr Andrew Martin
UR-WG
Mr Xiaoyu Chen
Mr Donal Fellows
WFM-RG
Dr Ian Taylor
GridNet2 members have also taken other significant leadership roles in the
standards organisations for the Grid community. Prof Malcolm Atkinson
served on the OGF’s GFSG as Data Area Director, and then on the OGF Board
of Directors. Dr Richard Hughes-Jones, Dr Steven Newhouse and Dr Stephen
Pickles also served as OGF Area Directors for the Infrastructure, Applications
and Compute Areas respectively. Mr Neil Chue Hong is also chair of the OGF
Nominations Committee, which solicits and selects or recommends
candidates to fill OGF leadership positions.
OGF20 took place in Manchester, hosted by UK e-Science. GridNet2 members
were instrumental in organising this OGF meeting, which had a very high
attendance (over 900 attendees, compared with over 600 for GGF18 and over
250 for OGF21). Dr Stephen Pickles was chair of the Local Organising
Committee for OGF20, and the co-located 2nd EGEE User Forum. Holding an
OGF meeting in the UK gave an opportunity to showcase UK and European
e-Science to the global Grid community.
GridNet2 members (Prof Omer Rana, Dr Stephen McGough and Dr Ian
Taylor) organised a GridNet2 e-Science workshop at OGF21. The aim of the
workshop was to disseminate information about the work being done by
GridNet2 members to both other GridNet2 members and the broader Grid
community, and to encourage communication between the different areas of
OGF in which GridNet2 members participate.
The GridNet2 e-Science workshop was held over three sessions at OGF21, and
in total, 19 people attended the three sessions. Each of the three sessions had
a theme:
•
Use of novel computer science techniques
•
Demonstration provided through applications of e-Science concepts
•
Standards activities and coordination across standards bodies
The workshop presentations are available from the wiki set up by Prof Omer
Rana.
For more information, see appendix D.1, GridNet2 e-Science Workshop
(OGF21).
Page 18
2 GridNet2 Member Summaries
2
GridNet2 Member Summaries
This section contains the summaries for those who applied for and received
GridNet2 funding (GridNet2 members).
The information in this section is derived from the reports in section 3,
GridNet2 Reports.
There is a table for each GridNet2 member which includes the following
information:
•
The People row shows the number of people, and their names and
institution that were covered by the award.
Where an award covers more than one person, there is a summary table
for each person.
•
The Events entry lists the events that this GridNet2 member attended as
a result of the GridNet2 award.
For a list of events covered by GridNet2 funding, see appendix D, Events.
•
The Roles entry includes chairing or co-chairing meetings, chairing or
co-chairing research, working and community groups, and giving
presentations.
The roles are intended to show the depth of participation in a particular
area during GridNet2.
The totals for roles have been calculated by each role per meeting. For
example, if a GridNet2 member has chaired a working group over the
course of two meetings, this is counted as two roles.
•
The Publications entry includes documents and draft documents where
the GridNet2 member was an author or contributor to OGF documents,
and any other publications and papers where GridNet2 funding was
instrumental in producing the documents.
For full details of the publications, see appendix B, Publications.
•
The Areas of interest entry lists the areas in which the GridNet2
member has participated.
The areas of interest are intended to show the breadth of participation
during GridNet2.
This includes research, working and community group sessions, BoF
sessions and workshops at GGF/OGF meetings, IETF meetings and F2F
meetings.
The totals for areas of interest have been calculated once for all the
meetings which the GridNet2 member attended. For example, if the
GridNet2 member has participated in the same working group sessions at
three meetings, this is counted as one area of interest.
Areas of interest do not include talks, such as keynotes or plenaries.
•
The Claim entry shows the claim number given for GridNet2
administration purposes, the amount of the award and the amount
claimed.
For a list of technical areas covered by GridNet2 funding, see appendix C,
Standardisation Participation by Area.
Page 19
2 GridNet2 Member Summaries
2.1
Mr Oluwafemi Ajayi – NeSC
Mr Ajayi was supported by Prof Richard Sinnott’s GridNet2 awards
(97 and117).
Table 4: GridNet2 Summary for Oluwafemi Ajayi
No.
Description
People
1
Mr Oluwafemi Ajayi, NeSC, University of Glasgow
Events
3
GGF16, GGF18 1, OGF20
Roles
1
Presenter - OGSA-DAI User Forum (OGF20)
Publications
0
Areas of
interest
11
CA-OPS WG (GGF16)
Dynamic Level Service Agreement (OGF20)
Enterprise Grid Requirements (OGF18)
GRAAP WG (OGF18)
Grid Interoperation (GGF16)
Grids Mean Business (OGF20)
LSG-WG (GGF16/GGF18)
OGSA-Authz WG (GGF16)
OGSA-DAI User Forum (OGF20)
Shibboleth for Grids (OGF18)
ShibGrid (GGF16)
Claim
97
117
See section 2.34, Prof Richard Sinnott - NeSC.
To see the full details of Mr Ajayi’s GridNet2 activities, see section 3.1, Mr
Oluwafemi Ajayi – NeSC.
2.2
Dr Mario Antonioletti – EPCC
Dr Mario Antonioletti was funded by Dr Steven Newhouse’s GridNet2 award
(99).
Table 5: GridNet2 Summary for Mario Antonioletti
No.
Description
People
1
Dr Mario Antonioletti, Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre
Events
1
OGF22
1
At the time of GGF18, the merger between GGF and EGA had been completed and the new organisation named as
the Open Grid Forum (OGF). However, this event was still branded as a GGF event, and this same terminology has
been used in this document to refer to this event.
Page 20
2 GridNet2 Member Summaries
Roles
No.
Description
6
Chair – OGSA Data Architecture Future Directions Discussion (OGF22)
Co-chair – OGSA-DAI WG
Co-chair – DAIS WG (OGF22)
Co-chair – OGSA-DMI (OGF22)
Presenter – OGSA Data Architecture (OGF22)
Presenter – DAIS Overviews (OGF22)
Publications
0
Areas of
interest
16
Cloud Systems BoF
DAIS-WG
Data Management Workshop
DFDL-WG
GIN
Globus Software User Experiences
Grid Usage and Productivity in HPC
HPCP Specification Adoption
OMII-Europe
OGSA-DAI
OGSA-DMI
OGSA Data Architecture
SAGA
SAGA+DAIS
SRM 2.2 Protocol Review
The Encyclopedia of Life
Claim
99
See section 2.27, Dr Steven Newhouse – OMII-UK.
To see the full details of Dr Antonioletti’s GridNet2 activities, see section 3.2,
Dr Mario Antonioletti - EPCC.
2.3
Prof Malcolm Atkinson – NeSC
Table 6: GridNet2 Summary for Malcolm Atkinson
People
No.
Description
2
• Prof Malcolm Atkinson, Director of the e-Science Institute, NeSC,
University of Edinburgh
• Dr Dave Berry, Deputy Director of the e-Science Institute, NeSC,
University of Edinburgh
See section 2.5, Dr Dave Berry – NeSC.
Events
10
GFSG F2F – Jan 06, GGF16, GFSG at GGF16, GGF17, GFSG at GGF17,
GGF18, GFSG at GGF18, OGF19, OGF20, OGF21
Page 21
2 GridNet2 Member Summaries
Roles
No.
Description
19
Area Director for the Data Area (GGF16, GGF17)
Co-chair – Development of National and International Education and
Training Policy (OGF19, OGF20, OGF21)
Co-chair ET-CG (GGF18, OGF19, OGF20, OGF21)
Co-chair Data Area Meeting (GGF17, GGF18)
Co-chair – IPR for Grid Education and Training (OGF19)
Co-chair – Policies for Cooperation on t-Infrastructure (OGF19, OGF20)
Co-organiser – Workshops and BoFs on Grid Education and Training
(GGF16, GGF17, GGF18)
GFSG member
Presenter – Grid Education and Training: Work in Progress and Future
Collaboration (GGF16)
Publications
1
Policy for Supporting Grid Education and Training
Areas of
interest
33
BYTEIO-WG (GGF17, GGF18, OGF21)
DAIS-WG (GGF16, GGF17, GGF18, OGF19)
DAIS for RDF/Ontology (GGF17, GGF18)
Data Access and Integration (GGF16, GGF17)
Data Area meeting (GGF16, GGF17)
DFDL-WG (GGF16, GGF18)
E&T Content (OGF19)
E&T Frameworks (OGF19, OGF21)
Earth Observation and Ground Systems (GGF18)
Education and Training BoFs/ET-CG (GGF16, GGF17, GGF18)
GFS-WG (GGF16, GGF17, GGF18)
GIN-CG (OGF21)
Grid Architecture (GGF16)
GRIDFTP-WG (GGF16, GGF18)
GSM-WG (GGF16, GGF18)
HPCP-WG (GGF18, OGF21)
INFO-D-WG (GGF16, GGF17)
IPR for Grid Education (OGF19, OGF20, OGF21)
Metadata, Search and Preservation in Data Grids (GGF17)
OGC-OGF (GGF18)
OGSA-BES-WG (GGF18)
OGSA-D-WG (GGF16)
OGSA-DAI-WG (GGF17)
OGSA-DAI Users Forum (GGF18)
OGSA Naming Report-Out (OGF20)
OMII Core Grid Infrastructure (OGF19)
Policy for Cooperation on t-Infrastructure (OGF19, OGF20, OGF21)
Page 22
2 GridNet2 Member Summaries
No.
Description
Preservation Environments in Data Grids (GGF17)
Reference Model (OGF20)
Standards All-Hands: Integrating the Work of OGF (OGF19)
SNIA (GGF16)
Towards Professional Grid Qualifications (OGF20)
Voice of Community (GGF17)
100
Claim
Awarded: £30,000
Claimed: £31,623.01
To see the full details of Prof Atkinson’s GridNet2 activities, see section 3.3,
Prof Malcolm Atkinson – NeSC.
2.4
Table 7:
Prof Mark Baker – Reading
GridNet2 Summary for Mark Baker
No.
Description
People
1
Prof Mark Baker, University of Reading
Events
1
ICEAGE Project Curricula Development Workshop for e-Science Education
Roles
0
Publications
1
Policy for Supporting Grid Education and Training
Areas of
interest
1
e-Science curricula development
Claim
138
Awarded: £584
Claimed: £399.99
To see the full details of Prof Baker’s GridNet2 activities, see section 3.4, Prof
Mark Baker – Reading.
2.5
Dr Dave Berry – NeSC
Dr Berry was funded by Prof Malcolm Atkinson’s GridNet2 award (100).
Table 8: GridNet2 Summary for Dave Berry
No.
Description
People
1
Dr Dave Berry, NeSC, University of Edinburgh
Events
5
GGF16, GGF18, OGSA F2F – Jan 06, OGSA Telcons – Aug 06, OGF19
Page 23
2 GridNet2 Member Summaries
Roles
No.
Description
9
Co-chair – Grid Computing Now! The UK Experience in the adoption of
Grid Computing Technologies (GGF18)
Co-chair – OGSA-D-WG (GGF16, OGSA F2F – Jan 06, GGF18)
Co-chair – OGSA Data Architecture Overview (GGF16)
Co-chair – OGSA Data Architecture Scenarios (GGF18)
Co-chair – OGSA Data Architecture Services (GGF18)
Co-chair – OGSA Data Architecture Working Session (GGF16)
Co-chair – OGSA Data Document Review (OGF19)
Co-chair – EMS/Data Scenarios (OGF19)
Publications
2
The Open Grid Services Architecture, version 1.5
OGSA Data Architecture
Areas of
interest
20
BYTEIO-WG (OGF19)
DAIS-WG (GGF16)
Data Area Meeting (GGF16)
Data Movement Interface Standardisation (DMIS) BoF (GGF16)
Development Tools for GT4 Service Programming (GGF18)
Enterprise and Standards Summit Sessions (GGF18)
Enterprise Grid Requirements (GGF18)
GFS-WG (GGF16)
Grid Architecture Experts Workshop (GGF16)
Grid Interoperation Now (GGF16)
GSM-WG (OGF19)
OGSA-WG (GGF18, OGF19)
OGSA and EGA Reference Model (GGF18)
OGSA Workflow (OGF19)
Pharmaceutical Grid Requirements (GGF18)
QoS BoF (OGF19)
SNIA Joint Session (GGF16)
Standards All Hands: Integrating the Work of OGF (OGF19)
Storage Resource Management Standard Proposal (OGF19)
Topics in Identity Management (GGF18)
Claim
100
See section 2.3, Prof Malcolm Atkinson – NeSC
To see the full details of Dr Berry’s GridNet2 activities, see section 3.5, Dr
Dave Berry – NeSC.
2.6
Prof David Chadwick – Kent
Table 9: Gridnet2 Summary for David Chadwick
No.
Page 24
Description
2 GridNet2 Member Summaries
No.
Description
People
1
Prof David Chadwick, University of Kent
Events
9
GGF14, GGF15, GGF16, GGF17, GGF18, OGF19, OGF20, OGF21, OGF22
Roles
14
Co-chair – Authz Interoperation Demos (OGF22)
Co-chair – OGSA-Authz WG (GGF14, GGF15, GGF16, GGF17, GGF18,
OGF19, OGF20, OGF21, OGF22)
Presenter – Dynamic Delegation of Authority Between Sites (GGF15)
Presenter – GridNet2 Workshop (OGF21)
Presenter – OGSA Authz WG (GGF14, OGF21)
Publications
14
OGF Documents
Functional Components of Grid Service Provider Authorisation Service
Middleware
OGSI Authorization Requirements (ID)
Use of XACML Request Context to Obtain an Authorisation Decision
Use of SAML to Retrieve Authorisation Credentials
Use of SAML for OGSI Authorization
Use of WS-Trust and SAML to Access a CVS
Conference Papers
Adding Support to XACML for Dynamic Delegation of Authority in Multiple
Domains (10th IFIP TC6, TC11)
Advanced Security for Virtual Organizations: The Pros and Cons of
Centralized vs Decentralized Security Models (CCGrid 2008)
Advanced Security Infrastructures for Grid Education (WMSCI 2006)
Authorisation using Attributes from Multiple Authorities (WETICE 2006,
Best Paper Award)
Building a Modular Authorization Infrastructure (AHM 2006)
Obligation for Role Based Access Control (SSNDS 07)
Providing Secure Coordinated Access to Grid Services (MGC 2006)
Supporting Decentralized, Security focused Dynamic Virtual Organizations
Across the Grid (2nd IEEE Conference on e-Science and Grid Computing
2006)
Page 25
2 GridNet2 Member Summaries
Areas of
interest
No.
Description
14
Astro RG Workshop (GGF17, OGF20)
CAOPS-WG (OGF 19, OGF20, OGF21)
Federated Identity (OGF19)
Globus Security for the Real World (GGF18)
Leveraging Site Infrastructures for Multi-Site Grids (GGF15)
LoA BoF and RG (OGF19, OGF20, OGF21)
OGSA Authn Charter BoF (OGF19)
OGSA-Authz-WG (GGF14, GGF15, GGF16, GGF17, GGF18, OGF19, OGF20)
OGSA Express Authentication Security Profile (OGF20, OGF21)
OGSA Security (OGF19)
SAGA Security (OGF19)
Security Area Group Meeting (GGF16, OGF22)
Security Talks (GGF18, OGF21)
Shibboleth (GGF16, GGF18)
Claim
88
Awarded: £12,600
Claimed: £12,805.11
To see the full details of Prof Chadwick’s GridNet2 activities, see section 3.6,
Prof David Chadwick – Kent.
2.7
Mr Xiaoyu Chen – Brunel
Table 10: GridNet2 Summary for Xiaoyu Chen
No.
Description
People
1
Mr Xiaoyu Chen, Brunel University
Events
1
OGF21
Roles
1
Co-chair UR-WG
Publications
0
Areas of
interest
2
Claim
128
UR-WG
RUS-WG
Awarded: £1,000
Claimed: £973.61
To see the full details of Mr Chen’s GridNet2 activities, see section 3.7, Mr
Xiaoyu Chen – Brunel.
2.8
Mr Andrew Cooper – Oxford
Mr Andrew Cooper was supported by Dr Andrew Martin’s GridNet2 award,
(89).
Page 26
2 GridNet2 Member Summaries
Table 11: GridNet2 Summary for Andrew Cooper
No.
Description
People
1
Mr Andrew Cooper, University of Oxford
Events
1
GGF16
Roles
2
Presenter – Use Cases for Trusted Computing (GGF16)
Presenter – Virtualization and the Grid (GGF16)
Publications
1
Use Cases for Trusted Computing
Areas of
interest
2
Grid Applications of Virtualization Technologies BoF
Claim
89
Trusted Computing RG
For more information, see section 2.26, Dr Andrew Martin – Oxford.
To see the full details of Mr Cooper’s GridNet2 activities, see section 3.26, Dr
Andrew Martin – Oxford.
2.9
Dr Thierry Delaitre – Westminster
Table 12: GridNet2 Summary for Thierry Delaitre
No.
Description
People
1
Dr Thierry Delaitre, University of Westminster
Events
1
GGF18
Roles
1
Presenter – Interoperability Issues for Multi-Grids (GGF18)
Publications
0
Areas of
interest
3
Distributed Simulation
ETSI Grid BoF
GIN-CG
115
Claim
Awarded: £1,500
Claimed: £1,500
To see the full details of Dr Delaitre’s GridNet2 activities, see section 3.9, Dr
Thierry Delaitre – Westminster.
2.10
Dr Abdeslem Djaoui – STFC
Dr Abdeslem Djaoui was supported by Dr Steve Fisher’s GridNet2 awards (103
and 120).
Table 13: GridNet2 Summary for Abdeslem Djaoui
People
No.
Description
1
Dr Abdeslem Djaoui, STFC (Rutherford Appleton Laboratory)
Page 27
2 GridNet2 Member Summaries
No.
Description
Events
2
GGF15, OGF20, OGF21
Roles
2
Presenter – INFOD Base Specification (GGF15)
Presenter – OGSA F2F (OGF20)
Publications
1
OGSA Glossary of Terms v1.6
Areas of
interest
9
Data/Compute Affinity – Focus on Data Caching (OGF21)
INFOD-WG (GGF15)
OGSA Glossary (OGF20)
OGSA Information Services (OGF20)
OGSA Naming (OGF20)
OGSA WG (GGF15, OGF20)
OGSA Workflow (OGF 20)
Understanding Grid in the Distributed Computing Landscape workshop
(OGF21)
Web 2.0 Grids and Cyberinfrastructure (OGF21)
Claim
103
120
See section 2.12, Dr Steve Fisher – STFC.
To see the full details of Dr Djaoui’s GridNet2 activities, which are
incorporated into Dr Fisher’s reports, see section 3.12, Dr Steve Fisher –
STFC.
2.11
Mr Donal Fellows – Manchester
Table 14: GridNet2 Summary for Donal Fellows
No.
Description
People
1
Mr Donal Fellows, University of Manchester
Events
4
OGF21, OGF22, OGSA F2Fs (Aug 07 and Jan 08)
Roles
5
Chair – OGSA-RSS-WG EPS Discussion (OGF20)
Co-chair – Resource Selection Discussion (OGF22)
Co-chair – UR-WG (OGF20)
Co-chair – Usage Record Format Working Session (OGF22)
Editor for Reference Model
Publications
6
Job Submission Description Language (JSDL) Specification v1.0
JSDL HPC Profile Application Extension, Version 1.0
JSDL SPMD Application Extension, Version 1.0
OGSA Glossary of Terms
OGSA Resource Selection Services: Specification
Web Services Agreement Specification (WS-Agreement)
Page 28
2 GridNet2 Member Summaries
Areas of
interest
No.
Description
13
Activity Instance Document Schema BoF (OGF22)
GLUE-WG (OGF20, OGF22)
HPCP-WG (OGF20, OGF22)
Information Modelling for Computing Resources workshop (OGF20)
JSDL-WG (OGF20, OGF22)
National and International Grid Education and Training Policy (OGF20)
OGSA-RUS-WG (OGF 20, OGF22)
OGSA-WG General Session (OGF22)
OGSA Info/Data Modelling Architecture (OGF22)
RM-WG (OGF20, OGF22)
RSS Interface Specification workshop (OGF20)
Towards a Usage Record 2.0 Workshop (OGF20)
UR-WG (OGF20)
Claim
125
Award: £5000
Claimed: £4,703.35
To see the full details of Mr Fellows’ GridNet2 activities, see section 3.11, Mr
Donal Fellows – Manchester.
2.12
Dr Steve Fisher – STFC
Table 15: GridNet2 Summary for Steve Fisher
People
No.
Description
3
• Dr Steve Fisher, STFC (Rutherford Appleton Laboratory)
• Abdeslem Djaoui, STFC (Rutherford Appleton Laboratory)
For more information, see section 2.10, Dr Abdeslem Djaoui – STFC
• Mark Leese, STFC (Daresbury Laboratory)
For more information, see section 2.24, Mr Mark Leese – STFC.
Events
11
INFOD-WG F2F x5, GGF15, GGF16, GGF18, OGF19, OGF20, OGF21
Roles
7
Co-chair INFOD-WG (GGF18)
Presenter – Data Area Meeting (OGF19, OGF20)
Presenter – INFOD-WG status (GGF16)
Presenter – SAGA and Service Discovery (OGF19, OGF20, OGF21)
Publications
2
Information Dissemination in the Grid Environment - Base Specifications
SAGA Extension: Service Discovery API
Areas of
interest
2
INFOD WG
SAGA
Page 29
2 GridNet2 Member Summaries
Claim
No.
Description
103
120
Award: £29,500
Claimed: £18,100.36
To see the full details of Dr Fisher’s GridNet2 activities, see section 3.12, Dr
Steve Fisher – STFC.
2.13
Mr Andrew Harrison - Cardiff
Table 16: GridNet2 Summary for Andrew Harrison
No.
Description
People
1
Mr Andrew Harrison, Cardiff University
Events
3
OGF20, OGF21, OGF22
Roles
5
Presenter – Embedding Workflows into Different Environments (OGF21)
Presenter – Workflows Hosted in Portals (WHIP) (OGF20)
Presenter – Workflow Management RG (OGF22)
Secretary – WFM-RG (OGF20, OGF21)
Publications
0
Areas of
interest
8
e-Arts and e-Humanities (OGF20)
GridNet2 e-Science Workshop (OGF21)
OGSA Workflow (OGF20, OGF21)
OMII Software (OGF20)
Sharing Workflows (OGF20)
Web 2.0 Grids and Cyberinfrastructure (OGF21)
Web 2.0 Technology and Semantic Research Grid (OGF21)
Workflow Management RG (OGF20, OGF21, OGF22)
122
135
Claim
Award: £3,500
Claimed: £3,451.75
To see the full details of Mr Harrison’s GridNet2 activities, see section 3.13, Mr
Andrew Harrison – Cardiff.
2.14
Mr Chris Higgins – Edinburgh
Table 17: GridNet2 Summary for Chris Higgins
No.
Description
People
1
Mr Chris Higgins, EDINA, University of Edinburgh
Events
5
OGC – June 06, GGF18, OGF20, OGF21, OGF22
Page 30
2 GridNet2 Member Summaries
Roles
No.
Description
8
Co-organiser - OGF-OGC Collaboration workshop (OGF20, OGF21, OGF22)
Liaison between Grid/e-Science and Geographic Information (GI)
communities
Presenter - OGF-OGC Collaboration workshop (OGF20, OGF21, OGF22)
Presenter – GridNet2 workshop
Publications
0
Areas of
interest
10
Astronomical Virtual Observatory (OGF20)
Authz Interoperation Demos (OGF22)
Earth Observation and Ground Systems (GGF18)
GridNet2 workshop (OGF21)
National and International Grid Education and Training Policy (OGF21)
OGF-OGC Collaboration (OGF20, OGF 21, OGF22)
OMII-Europe (OGF22)
Security (GGF18)
Security Area Meeting (OGF21)
Web 2.0 Grids and Cyberinfrastructure (OGF20)
Claim
101
Award: £12,000
Claimed: £10,604.01
To see the full details of Mr Higgins’ GridNet2 activities, see section 3.14, Mr
Chris Higgins – Edinburgh.
2.15
Mr Neil Chue Hong – OMII-UK
Mr Neil Chue Hong inherited Dr Steven Newhouse’s GridNet2 award (99)
when he replaced Dr Newhouse as Director of OMII-UK.
Table 18: GridNet2 Summary for Neil Chue Hong
No.
Description
People
1
Mr Neil Chue Hong, OMII-UK
Events
2
OGF21, OGF22
Roles
3
Chair NomCom (OGF21)
Chair OMII-UK Workshop: Reducing the Gap between Researchers and
Resources (OGF21)
Co-chair OGSA-Byte I/O (OGF21)
Publications
1
OGSA Byte I/O Interoperability Testing Specification
Page 31
2 GridNet2 Member Summaries
Areas of
interest
No.
Description
19
Authz Interoperation (OGF22)
caGrid 1.0 (OGF21)
DAIS-WG (OGF21, OGF22)
Data Area Meeting (OGF21)
Data Management (OGF22)
Financial Services (OGF22)
GIN (OGF21, OGF22)
Grids in the IT Data Centre (OGF21)
HPCP (OGF22)
OGC/OGF Collaboration (OGF21)
OGSA-Byte I/O (OGF21)
OGSA-DAI (OGF21)
OGSA Data Architecture (OGF21, OGF22)
OGSA-DMI (OGF22)
OMII-Europe and OMII-UK (OGF21, OGF22)
SAGA (OGF21, OGF22)
Standard API for Data Grids (OGF21, OGF22)
The Encyclopedia of Life (OGF22)
Web 2.0 (OGF21)
Claim
99
See section 2.27, Dr Steven Newhouse – OMII-UK.
To see the full details of Mr Chue Hong’s GridNet2 activities, see section 3.15,
Mr Neil Chue Hong – OMII-UK.
2.16
Dr Richard Hughes-Jones – Manchester
Table 19: GridNet2 Summary for Richard Hughes-Jones
No.
Description
People
1
Dr Richard Hughes-Jones, University of Manchester
Events
4
GGF15, OGF19, OGF20, OGF21
Roles
7
Area Director – Infrastructure Area (OGF20, OGF21)
Chair – Infrastructure Area (OGF20)
Co-Chair NM-WG (GGF15, OGF19, OGF20)
Presenter – Networking and Infrastructure (OGF21)
Publications
Page 32
0
2 GridNet2 Member Summaries
Areas of
interest
No.
Description
13
Astronomy Applications meeting (OGF19)
Firewall Issues RG meeting (OGF19, OGF20, OGF21)
Grids and System Virtualisation Group (OGF19, OGF20, OGF21)
Grid High Performance Networking (OGF19, OGF20, OGF21)
GridNet2 e-Science Workshop
Infrastructure Area Meeting (OGF19, OGF21)
Network Markup Language Working Group (OGF20, OGF21)
Network Measurement WG (OGF19, OGF20, OGF21)
Network Measurements workshop (GGF15)
Particle and Nuclear Physics Applications (OGF19)
Standards All Hands Meeting (OGF21)
Storage Networking Community Group (OGF19)
Web Services for NM Applications (GGF15)
Claim
102
Award: £6,000
Claimed: £5,844.05
To see the full details ofDr Hughes-Jones’ GridNet2 activities, see section 3.16,
Dr Richard Hughes-Jones – Manchester.
2.17
Dr Jens Jensen – STFC
Table 20: GridNet2 Summary for Jens Jensen
No.
Description
People
1
Dr Jens Jensen, STFC (Rutherford Appleton Laboratory)
Events
1
OGF22
Roles
8
Chair – GSM-WG (OGF22)
Presenter – SRM 2.2 Protocol Review (OGF22)
Presenter – Data Management Issues for GSM (OGF22)
Presenter – Private Key Protection (OGF22)
Presenter – Certificate Renewal (OGF22)
Presenter – CP/CPS Model Template (OGF22)
Presenter – Robot Certificates (OGF22)
Presenter – Higher Level CAs (OGF22)
Publications
1
Grid Certificate Profile
Page 33
2 GridNet2 Member Summaries
Areas of
interest
No.
Description
11
ASTRO-RG
CAOPS-IGTF
CAOPS-WG
GFS-WG
GIN
GSM-WG
PE-RG
RUS-WG
Storage Resource Brokers
TeraGrid Access Management
Workflow Engines
Claim
136
Award: £1,614
Claimed: £1,354.20
To see the full details of Dr Jensen’s GridNet2 activities, see section 3.17, Dr
Jens Jensen – STFC.
2.18
Dr Shantenu Jha – UCL
Table 21: GridNet2 Summary for Shantenu Jha
No.
Description
People
1
Dr Shantenu Jha, University College London
Events
7
GGF15, GGF16, GGF17, GGF18, SAGA Design and Implementation
Meeting, LGC Workshop, ISSGC07
Roles
6
Chair for SAGA-RG and SAGA-WG (GGF15, GGF16, GGF17, GGF18)
Presenter – SAGA status (GGF15)
Presenter – Introduction to SAGA (ISSGC07)
Publications
3
A Collection of Use Cases for a Simple API for Grid Applications
A Requirements Analysis for a Simple API for Grid Applications
A Simple API for Grid Applications (SAGA)
Areas of
interest
8
SAGA and Grid CPR (GGF16)
SAGA API (GGF16)
SAGA Design (GGF17)
SAGA Implementations (GGF16)
SAGA Interoperability (GGF16)
SAGA Outreach (ISSGC 07)
SAGA Research Group (GGF15, GGF16)
Lightweight Grid Computing
Page 34
2 GridNet2 Member Summaries
Claim
No.
Description
86
Award: £10,000
Claimed: £9,777.25
To see the full details of Dr Jha’s GridNet2 activities, see section 3.18, Dr
Shantenu Jha – UCL.
2.19
Mr Jipu Jiang – NeSC
Mr Jiang was supported by Prof Richard Sinnott’s GridNet2 award (97).
Table 22: GridNet2 Summary for Jipu Jiang
No.
Description
People
1
Mr Jipu Jiang, NeSC, Glasgow
Events
1
GGF18
Roles
0
Publications
0
Areas of
interest
6
Education and Training Community Group Workshop
Identity Management
OGSA Authz WG
Security Talks
Shibboleth for Grids
Storage Grids in Healthcare
Claim
97
See section 2.34, Prof Richard Sinnott - NeSCProf Richard Sinnott - .
To see the full details of Mr Jiang’s GridNet2 activities, see section 3.19, Mr
Jipu Jiang – NeSC.
2.20
Dr Mike Jones – Manchester
Table 23: GridNet2 Summary for Mike Jones
No.
Description
People
1
Dr Mike Jones, University of Manchester
Events
5
GGF16, GGF17, GGF18, OGF20, OGF21
Roles
5
NGS Authz and Authn Representative for GIN
Presenter – ES-LoA Project (OGF21)
Presenter – Integrating Shibboleth into GridSite (GGF16)
Presenter – SHEBANGS Status (GGF16, GGF18)
Publications
1
Grid Certificate Profile
Page 35
2 GridNet2 Member Summaries
Areas of
interest
No.
Description
24
Aggregating Mobile Devices with Grids (GGF18)
CAOPS (GGF16, GGF17, GGF18, OGF20, OGF21)
Data Access and Integration (GGF17)
Dynamic Service Level Agreements (OGF20)
Firewall Issues Research Group (GGF17, GGF18, OGF21)
GIN (GGF16, GGF17, OGF20)
gLite (OGF20)
Grid and Shibboleth (GGF16, GGF18)
Grid Authorization – Interoperability Here and Now (GGF16)
Grids and Virtualisation (GGF16, OGF21)
GSM-WG (OGF21)
GT4 Status & Experiences, Applications and Deployments (GGF17)
IGTF (GGF16, GGF18, OGF21)
Information Modelling for Computing Resources (OGF20)
Interoperability (GGF16)
JSDL WG (OGF20, OGF21)
LoA RG (OGF20, OGF21)
OGF101 (GGF18)
OGSA Authz (GGF16, GGF17, GGF18, OGF20, OGF21)
SAGA (OGF21)
Security Area Session (GGF17, OGF21))
Standard API for Data Grids (OGF21)
TeraGrid Security (GGF17)
Topics in Identity Management (GGF18)
Claim
109
126
Award: £8,050
Claimed: £7,624.92
To see the full details of Dr Jones’ GridNet2 activities, see section 3.20, Dr
Mike Jones – Manchester.
2.21
Mr Ian Kelley – Cardiff
Table 24: GridNet2 Summary for Ian Kelley
No.
Description
People
1
Mr Ian Kelley, Cardiff University
Events
4
GGF18, OGF20, OGF21, OGF22
Roles
0
Publications
0
Page 36
2 GridNet2 Member Summaries
Areas of
interest
No.
Description
13
Collaborative Grids (OGF20)
e-Arts and e-Humanities (OGF20)
Grid: A Means to What End? (OGF20)
GridNet2 Meeting (OGF21)
GRIDREL-RG (OGF21)
GridSphere (GGF18, OGF21)
myExperiment (OGF21)
OGSA Workflow (OGF20)
Scaling up to the Enterprise Level (OGF20)
Service Oriented Knowledge Utilities (OGF20)
Sharing Workflows (OGF20, OGF22)
Web 2.0 (OGF21)
Web Portals (OGF21)
Claim
111
132
Award: £6,000
Claimed: £5,978.07
To see the full details of Mr Ian Kelley’s GridNet2 activities, see section 3.21,
Mr Ian Kelley – Cardiff.
2.22
Dr Amrey Krause – Edinburgh
Table 25: GridNet2 Summary for Amrey Krause
No.
Description
People
1
Dr Amrey Krause, University of Edinburgh
Events
5
GGF16, GGF18, OGF20, OGF21, OGF22
Roles
3
Chair – Data Integration Solutions with OGSA-DAI (OGF21)
Presenter – OGSA DAI Technology Update (GGF16)
Presenter – OGSA-DAI Overview (OGF20)
Publications
3
Web Services Data Access and Integration - The Core (WS-DAI)
Specification
Web Services Data Access and Integration - The Relational Realisation
(WS-DAIR) Specification
Web Services Data Access and Integration - The XML Realization (WSDAIX) Specification
Page 37
2 GridNet2 Member Summaries
Areas of
interest
No.
Description
22
ByteIO WG (GGF16, GGF18, OGF21, OGF22)
Converging Web Services Standards BoF (GGF16)
DAIS-WG (GGF16, GGF18, OGF20, OGF21, OGF22)
Data Area Meeting (GGF16, GGF18)
Data Integration Solutions with OGSA-DAI (OGF21)
Data Management (GGF18, OGF22)
Data Management Convener (OGF20)
DFDL-WG (OGF22)
Education and Training Community Group Workshop (GGF18)
Encyclopedia of Life (OGF22)
Globus and Community (OGF20, OGF21)
Globus committers meeting (OGF20)
GridNet2 Workshop (OGF21)
OGSA-DAI and Information Retrieval (OGF20)
OGSA-DAI Performance Testing (OGF20)
OGSA-DAI Technology Update (GGF16)
OGSA-DAI User Forum/Group (GGF18, OGF20, OGF21)
OGSA-DMI Working Group (GGF18, OGF20, OGF22)
OGSA-D-WG (OGF22)
OMII UK – Reducing the Gap Between Researchers and Resources
(OGF21)
RM-WG (OGFF20)
SAGA (OGF20, OGF22)
Claim
105
Award: £8,000
Claimed: £6,497.63
To see the full details of Dr Krause’s GridNet2 activities, see section 3.22, Dr
Amrey Krause – Edinburgh.
2.23
Mr William Lee – Imperial
Mr William Lee was supported by Dr Steven McGough’s GridNet2 awards (90,
121, and 134).
Table 26: GridNet2 Summary for William Lee
No.
Description
People
1
Mr William Lee, Imperial College London
Events
3
GGF15, GGF16, GGF17,
Roles
3
Contributor – OGSA-BES
Presenter – GridSAM at JSDL-WG (GGF17)
Presenter – Introduction to GridSAM (GGF16)
Page 38
2 GridNet2 Member Summaries
Publications
No.
Description
3
Grid Economy Use Cases
JSDL SPMD Application Extension, v1.0
OGSA® Basic Execution Service Version 1.0
Areas of
interest
7
Interoperability Fests (GGF16)
JSDL Post v1.0 Discussions (GGF16)
JSDL Workshop (GGF16, GGF17)
OGSA EMS Architecture (GGF17)
OGSA-BES General Discussion (GGF16)
OMII-UK: Providing the e-Infrastructure and Tools to Enable e-Science
(GGF16)
SAGA Implementations (GGF16)
Claim
90
For more information, see section 2.25, Dr Stephen McGough – Imperial.
To see the full details of Mr William Lee’s GridNet2 activities, which are
incorporated into Dr McGough’s reports, see section 3.25, Dr Stephen
McGough – Imperial.
2.24
Mr Mark Leese – STFC
Mr Mark Leese was supported by Dr Steven Fisher’s GridNet2 awards, claims
103 and 120.
Table 27: GridNet2 Summary for Mark Leese
No.
Description
People
1
Mr Mark Leese, STFC (Daresbury Laboratory)
Events
3
GGF15, GGF17, OGF20
Roles
5
Co-Chair NM-WG (GGF15, GGF17, OGF20)
Presenter – Network Measurements Basics (GGF17)
Presenter – Performance Monitoring/GridMon (GGF15)
Publications
0
Areas of
interest
6
Firewall Issues Research Group (GGF17)
Grid High Performance Networking Research Group (GGF17)
GridWorld Japan (GGF17)
Infrastructure Area Meeting (OGF20)
Network Measurements Working Group (GGF15, GGF17)
Web Services Performance (GGF15)
Claim
103
120
For more information, see section 2.12, Dr Steve Fisher – STFC.
Page 39
2 GridNet2 Member Summaries
To see the full details of Mr Leese’s GridNet2 activities, which are
incorporated into Dr Fisher’s reports, see section 3.12, Dr Steve Fisher –
STFC.
2.25
Dr Stephen McGough – Imperial
Table 28: GridNet2 Summary for Stephen McGough
People
No.
Description
3
Dr Stephen McGough, Imperial College London
Mr William Lee, Imperial College London
For more information, see section 2.23, Mr William Lee – Imperial.
Mr Vesselin Novov, Imperial College London
For more information, see section 2.28, Mr Vesselin Novov – Imperial.
Events
18
GGF14, GGF15/OGSA F2F, GGF16, GGF17, GGF18, OGF19, OGF20, OGF21,
OGF22, OGSA F2Fs 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, SC06 and SC07
Roles
19
Chair – OGSA Workflow (OGF20, OGF21)
Chair – QoS BoF (OGF19)
Co-chair – JSDL WG (GGF14, GGF15, GGF16, GGF17, OGF19, OGF20,
OGF21, OGF22)
Co-chair – Activity Instance Document Schema BoF (OGF22)
Co-chair – GridNet2 e-Science Workshop (OGF21)
Co-chair – JSDL Activity Instance Schema (OGF22)
Presenter – GGF Job Description (GGF17)
Presenter – GridSAM (GGF14, GGF16, GGF17, OGF21)
Publications
2
Job Submission Description Language (JSDL) Specification v1.0
JSDL SPMD Application Extension, v1.0
Areas of
interest
28
CDDLM WG (GGF15)
Cloud Systems BoF (OGF22)
Compute Area Meeting (OGF19)
DMTF Technologies (OGF19)
Encyclopedia of Life (OGF22)
GIN (GGF18, OGF19)
GRAAP WG (GGF14, GGF15, OGF22)
GridNet2 e-Science (OGF21)
GSA-RG (GGF16, OGF20, OGF22)
HPC Profile BoF (GGF16, GGF18)
HPCP Specification Adoption (OGF22)
Joint IVOA-GGF Workshop (GGF17)
JSDL WG (GGF14, GGF15, GGF16, GGF17, OGF19, OGF20, OGF21, OGF22)
OGSA and GLUE Information and Data Modelling (OGF19, OGF20,
OGF22)
OGSA Authz-WG (OGF20)
Page 40
2 GridNet2 Member Summaries
No.
Description
OGSA Security (OGF19)
OGSA Workflow (OGF20, OGF21)
OGSA-BES WG (GGF14, GGF15, GGF16, GGF17, OGF19)
OGSA-D-WG (OGF19)
OGSA-EMS WG (GGF14, GGF15, GGF17, OGF19, OGF20, OGF22)
OGSA-WG (OGF19, OGF20, OGF21, OGF22)
OMII-UK (GGF16,OGF19 OGF21)
QoS (OGF19)
RSS WG (GGF15, GGF16, GGF17, OGF21)
SAGA WG (GGF14, GGF16, GGF17)
Shibboleth for Grids/GridShib (GGF18, OGF20)
Standards All Hands Meeting (OGF19, OGF21)
WFM-RG (OGF20, OGF22)
Claim
90
121
134
Award: £55,800
Claimed: £52,911.29
To see the full details of Dr McGough’s GridNet2 activities, see section 3.25,
Dr Stephen McGough – Imperial.
2.26
Dr Andrew Martin – Oxford
Table 29: GridNet2 Summary for Andrew Martin
People
No.
Description
2
• Dr Andrew Martin, University of Oxford
• Mr Andy Cooper, University of Oxford
For more information, see section 2.8, Mr Andrew Cooper – Oxford.
Events
3
GGF15, GGF16, TCG Members Meeting
Roles
5
Co-chair – TC-RG (GGF16)
Organiser – Grid Applications of Virtualization Technologies BoF (GGF16)
Presenter – ShibGrid (GGF16)
Presenter – Use Cases for Trusted Computing (GGF15, GGF16)
Publications
1
Use Cases for Trusted Computing in Grids
Page 41
2 GridNet2 Member Summaries
Areas of
interest
No.
Description
12
Firewall Issues RG (GGF15, GGF16)
Grid Authorization – Interoperability Here and Now (GGF16)
Leveraging Site Infrastructure for Multi-Site Grids (GGF15)
OGSA Authz WG (GGF15)
OGSA-D Security Discussion (GGF15)
Shibboleth and Grid (GGF16)
TC-RG: Reports and Discussion (GGF16)
Trusted Computing – Enterprise Storage and Key Management (TCG Nov
06)
Trusted Computing – Server Issues (TCG Nov 06)
Trusted Computing – Virtualization (TCG Nov 06)
Trusted Computing Authentication Technologies (TCG Nov 06)
Use Cases for Trusted Computing (GGF15)
Claim
89
Award: £10,000
Claimed: £5,643.91
To see the full details of Dr Martin’s GridNet2 activities, see section 3.26, Dr
Andrew Martin – Oxford.
2.27
Dr Steven Newhouse – OMII-UK
Table 30: GridNet2 Summary for Steven Newhouse
People
No.
Description
4
• Dr Steven Newhouse, OMII-UK
• Dr Mario Antonioletti, EPCC, University of Edinburgh
For more information, see section 2.2, Dr Mario Antonioletti – EPCC.
• Mr Neil Chue Hong, OMII-UK
For more information, see section 2.15, Mr Neil Chue Hong – OMII-UK.
• Mr Elias Theocharopoulos, NeSC, University of Edinburgh
For more information, see section 2.38, Mr Elias Theocharopoulos –
NeSC.
Events
4
GFSG – Jan 06, OGSA F2F – Jan 06, GGF16, GGF17
Roles
9
Area Director – Application Standards (GFSG, GGF16, GGF17)
Co-chair OGSA EMS Architecture (GGF17)
Co-chair OGSA-BES-WG (GGF16)
Co-organiser – Bridging the Divide: Community Application Requirements
Driving Standards Development workshop (GGF17)
Organiser – OMII-UK workshop (GGF16)
Presenter – Developing with OMII (GGF16)
Presenter - Joint IVOA-GGF: Capturing User Needs – A Middleware
Perspective (GGF17)
Page 42
2 GridNet2 Member Summaries
Publications
No.
Description
6
A Simple API for Grid Applications (SAGA)
A Requirements Analysis for a Simple API for Grid Applications
Grid Economy Use Cases
OGSA Basic Execution Service
OGSA EMS Architecture Scenarios
Web Services Agreement Specification (WS-Agreement)
17
Areas of
interest
Applications Area Meeting (GGF16, GGF17)
Bridging the Divide: Community Application Requirements Driving
Standards Development workshop(GGF17)
Converging Web Services Standards BoF (GGF17)
GFSG Steering Group (GGF16, GGF17)
Grid and Shib Investigators Meeting (GGF16)
Grid Architecture Experts workshop (GGF16)
Grid Interoperability Now (GGF16, GGF17)
HPC BoF (GGF17)
Interoperability Fests (GGF16)
Joint IVOA-GGF: Capturing User Needs – A Middleware Perspective
(GGF17)
OGSA BES (OGSA-WG F2F, GGF16)
OGSA EMS (OGSA WG F2F, GGF17)
OGSA Information Model (OGSA WG F2F, GGF16)
OGSA Round Table (GGF16)
OMII-UK: Providing the e-Infrastructure and Tools to Enable e-Science
workshop (GGF16)
SAGA RG (GGF16, GGF17)
Semantic Grid 101 (GGF16)
99
Claim
Award: £17,623
Claimed: £13,295.77
To see the full details of Dr Newhouse’s GridNet2 activities, see section 3.27,
Dr Steven Newhouse – OMII-UK.
2.28
Mr Vesselin Novov – Imperial
Mr Vesselin Novov was supported by Dr Stephen McGough’s GridNet2 awards
(90, 121 and 134).
Table 31: GridNet2 Summary for Vesselin Novov
No.
Description
People
1
Mr Vesselin Novov, Imperial College London
Events
7
GGF18, OGF20, OGF21, OGF22, OGSA F2F18, OGSA F2F19, SC07
Page 43
2 GridNet2 Member Summaries
No.
Roles
0
Publications
0
Areas of
interest
15
Description
Authz Interoperation Demos (OGF22)
Cloud Systems BoF (OGF22)
GIN Update (GGF18)
GIR-WG (OGF22)
HPCP-WG (OGF20, OGF21, OGF22)
JSDL-WG (GGF18, OGF20, OGF21)
OGSA-Authz-WG (GGF18, OGF22)
OGSA-BES Specification (GGF18, OGF20)
OGSA-WG (OGF22)
OMII-UK: Reducing the Gap between Researchers and Resources
(OGF21)
OGSA EMS and Interop (OGF22)
SAGA Software Solution (OGF21)
SAGA-WG (OGF22)
Shibboleth for Grids (GGF18)
Vulnerability Assessment and Secure Coding Practices for Middleware
(OGF21)
Claim
90
121
134
For more information, see section 2.25, Dr Stephen McGough – Imperial.
To see the full details of Mr Novov’s GridNet2 activities, which are
incorporated into Dr McGough’s reports, see section 3.25, Dr Stephen
McGough – Imperial.
2.29
Dr Savas Parastatidis - Newcastle
Table 32: GridNet2 Summary for Savas Parastatidis
No.
Description
People
1
Dr Savas Parastatidis, University of Newcastle
Events
1
GGF14
Roles
0
Publications
1
Page 44
Web Services Data Access and Integration - The Core (WS-DAI)
Specification, Version 1.0
2 GridNet2 Member Summaries
Areas of
interest
No.
Description
4
OGSA
OGSA-BES
OGSA-DAIS
Web services
85
Claim
Awarded: £1,750
Claimed: £1,639.57
To see the full details of Dr Parastatidis’ GridNet2 activities, see section 3.29,
Dr Savas Parastatidis – Newcastle.
2.30
Dr Colin Perkins – Glasgow
Table 33: GridNet2 Summary for Colin Perkins
No.
Description
People
1
Dr Colin Perkins, University of Glasgow
Events
9
IETF64, IETF65, IETF66, IETF67, IETF68, IETF69, IETF70, SUMOVER
Nov 05, SUMOVER Apr 07
Roles
23
Chair – Self Address Fixing Evolution BoF (IETF70)
Co-chair AVT WG (IETF64, IETF65, IETF66, IETF67, IETF68, IETF69,
IETF70)
Co-chair MMUSIC WG (IETF64, IETF65, IETF66, IETF66, IETF67,
IETF68, IETF69)
Presenter – Activities in the IETF (SUMOVER 05, SUMOVER07)
Presenter – Application Performance using TFRC in Real-World Networks
(IETF66)
Presenter – Multiplexing RTP and RTCP on a Single UDP Port for Ease of
NAT Traversal (IETF67)
Presenter – Scaling Multimedia Conferencing (SUMOVER 05)
Presenter – Transporting Real-Time Audio/Visual Data over DCCP
(IETF64)
Presenter – Update to RTP over DCCP Specification (IETF66)
Presenter – Using RTP with DCCP To Adapt Multimedia Applications to
Network Congestion (IETF67)
Publications
3
RTP and Datagram Congestion Control Protocol
Multiplexing RTP Data and Control Packets on a Single Port
SDP: Session Description Protocol
Areas of
interest
23
AVT WG Sessions (IETF64, IETF65, IETF66, IETF67, IETF68, IETF69,
IETF70)
Congestion Control for Real-Time Streaming (IETF68)
DCCP Working Group (IETF66)
Defining Signalling Protocols with SVC Extensions (IETF65, IETF66,
IETF68)
Page 45
2 GridNet2 Member Summaries
No.
Description
Developing Network Transport Protocols for eVLBI Data (IETF67, IETF68)
Forward Error Correction Codes (IETF65)
Harmonising SIP and RTSP (IETF65)
ICE Methodology for NAT Traversal (IETF66, IETF67, IETF68, IETF69)
Keep-Alive Mechanisms for NAT Traversal (IETF69)
Management of RTP (IETF69)
Matching ZRTP and DTLS to the RTP Model (IETF67)
Media Capability Negotiation Framework (IETF68)
MMUSIC Sessions (IETF64, IETF65, IETF66, IETF67, IETF68, IETF69)
RTP and DCCP (IETF68)
RTP Management Framework (IETF65)
RTP Payload Format (IETF66, IETF69, IETF70)
RTPSEC BoF (IETF66)
Secure Negotiation of Encryption and Authentication Keys (IETF67)
Securing RTP (IETF69, IETF70)
Self Address Fixing Evolution (IETF70)
Transport Area Directorate (IETF70)
Using Non-Compound RTCP for Congestion Control (IETF69, IETF70)
Video Codec Control Messages (IETF66, IETF68)
Claim
96
129
Awarded: £13,000
Claimed: £12,993.41
To see the full details of Dr Perkins’ GridNet2 activities, see section 3.30, Dr
Colin Perkins – Glasgow.
2.31
Dr Stephen Pickles – Manchester
Table 34: GridNet2 Summary for Stephen Pickles
No.
Description
People
1
Dr Stephen Pickles, University of Manchester
Events
11
GGF15, GFSG F2F Jan 06, GGF16, GGF17, GFSG Jul 06, GGF18, ETSI at
CoreGrid Conference, GFSG Dec 06, OGF19, OGF GIN F2F, OGF20
Page 46
2 GridNet2 Member Summaries
Roles
No.
Description
15
Chair Local Organising Committee – OGF20 and EGEE User Forum
(OGF20)
OGF Area Director for Compute Area (GGF15, GGF16, GG17, GGF18,
OGF19, OGF20, GFSG Jan 06, GFSG Jul 06, OGF GIN F2F)
OGF Area Director for Scheduling and Resource Management
OGF Liaison to ETSI – ETSI at CoreGrid Conference
Organiser – Computational Steering workshops (OGF20)
Organiser – Workshop on Heuristics for Implementing Semantic
Knowledge Yardsticks BoF (OGF20)
University of Manchester Contact for OASIS – OASIS WSRF Technical
Committee
Publications
8
A Simple API for Grid Applications (SAGA)
HPC Basic Profile Version 1.0
JSDL SPMD Application Extension
OGSA Basic Execution Service Version 1.0
OGSA Resource Selection Services
Usage Scenarios for a Grid Resource Allocation Agreement Protocol
Use-Cases and Requirements for Grid Checkpoint and Recovery
Web Services Agreement Specification (WS-Agreement)
Areas of
interest
22
Compute Area Meeting (GGF17)
Federated Identity (OGF19)
GGF/EGA merger – GFSGF2F Jan 06
GRAAP-WG (GGF16, GGF17)
Grid Interoperation Now (GGF16, GGF17, GGF18, GGF19, GIN F2F 07)
Grid Management (GGF18)
Grids in the Greenfield Regions (GGF16)
HPC Profile BoF/ HPC WG (GGF17, GGF18, OGF19)
Interoperability Fests (GGF16)
JSDL-WG (GGF16, GGF17, OGF19)
OGSA EMA Architecture (GGF17)
OGSA Grid Infrastructure (OGF19)
OGSA Security (OGF19)
OGSA-BES Status (OGF19)
OGSA-RSS-WG (GGF16, GGF18)
OGSA-RUS Specification (OGF19)
Security Talks (GGF18)
Semiconductor/EDA Grid Requirements (GGF18)
Shibboleth (GGF16, GGF18)
Standards (GGF17, GFSG F2F Jul 06, OGF19)
UR-WG (GGF16, GGF17, GGF18)
Visualization on the Grid (OGF19)
Page 47
2 GridNet2 Member Summaries
Claim
No.
Description
98
Award: £9,120
Claimed: £6,902.99
To see the full details of Dr Pickles’ GridNet2 activities, see section 3.31, Dr
Stephen Pickles – Manchester.
2.32
Prof Omer Rana – Cardiff
Table 35: GridNet2 Summary for Omer Rana
No.
Description
People
1
Prof Omer Rana, Cardiff School of Computer Science, Cardiff University
Events
7
GGF16, GGF17, GGF18, OGF19, OGF20, OGF21, OGF22
Roles
11
Chair – Semantic Grid workshops (GGF16)
Co-organiser for the following:
• WS-Agreement Workshop (co-located with GGF18)
• Dynamic Service Level Agreements Workshop (OGF20)
• GridNet2 e-Science Workshop (OGF21)
For more information, see section D.1, GridNet2 e-Science Workshop
(OGF21).
Presenter – CATNETS project at GRAAP WG (GGF16)
Presenter – Dynamic SLAs at GRAAP WG (GGF17)
Presenter – G-QoSM project (OGF19)
Presenter – GRAAP Why Do We Need SLAs? (OGF21)
Presenter – Healthcare@Home (GGF18)
Presenter – Workflow Optimization Sharing and Using Performance
Information (OGF20)
Presenter – WS-Agreement Use in CATNETS (WS-Agreement Workshop)
Publications
0
Areas of
interest
26
Aggregating Mobile Devices with Grids (GGF18)
Certificate Authorities (GGF17)
Cloud Computing BoF (OGF22)
Data Management Workshop (OGF22)
Enterprise Adoption Workshop (OGF22)
Evolution of Grids Towards Service-Oriented Knowledge Utilities (OGF20)
GRAAP WG (GGF16, GGF17, GGF18, OGF19, OGF20, OGF21, OGF22)
Grid Technologies for Arts, Humanities and Social Science CG (OGF21)
GridNet2 e-Science Workshop (OGF21)
Gridsphere Portlet Container for Portals (OGF19)
Joint IVOA –GGF (Astro RG) (GGF17)
JSDL (GGF17, OGF19, OGF21)
Page 48
2 GridNet2 Member Summaries
No.
Description
OGSA and EGA Reference Model (GGF18)
OGSA Information Model (GGF17, GGF18, OGF19)
OGSA Workflow (OGF19 OGF20)
OMII Core Grid Infrastructure (OGF19)
Production Grids Enterprise and Research (GGF16)
Provenance Challenge Workshop (GGF18)
Quality of Service BoF (OGF19)
Reliability and Robustness in Grid Computing Systems (OGF19)
SAGA API (OGF20)
Semantic Grid (GGF16)
Semantic Web (OGF19)
Service Level Terms for OGSA-ByteIO and OGSA-BES (OGF20)
SLA and Dynamic SLA (GGF16, GGF17, OGF20)
WS Agreement (GGF16, GGF17, GGF18)
Claim
107
133
Awarded: £7,800
Claimed: £7,375.97
To see the full details of Prof Rana’s GridNet2 activities, see section 3.32, Prof
Omer Rana – Cardiff.
2.33
Dr Matthew Shields – Cardiff
Table 36: GridNet2 Summary for Matthew Shields
No.
Description
People
1
Dr Matthew Shields, Cardiff University
Events
2
OGF20, OGF21
Roles
4
Co-secretary for WFM-RG (OGF20, OGF21)
Presenter – Developing Workflow Sharing and Interoperability Use Cases
(OGF21)
Presenter – GridNet2 Activities for WFM-RG (OGF21)
Publications
0
Areas of
interest
8
Astronomical Virtual Observatory (OGF20)
EGEE Workflow Convener meetings (OGF20)
EU Presentation (OGF20)
GridNet2 e-Science Workshop (OGF21)
myExperiment (OGF21)
OGSA Workflow Sharing (OGF21)
Web 2.0 (OGF21)
Workflow Management Research Group (OGF20, OGF21)
Page 49
2 GridNet2 Member Summaries
Claim
No.
Description
124
Awarded: £2,000
Claimed: £2,000
To see the full details of Dr Shields’ GridNet2 activities, see section 3.33, Dr
Matthew Shields – Cardiff.
2.34
Prof Richard Sinnott - NeSC
Table 37: GridNet2 Summary for Richard Sinnott
People
No.
Description
4
• Prof Richard Sinnott, NeSC, University of Glasgow
• Oluwafemi Ajayi, NeSC, University of Glasgow
See section 2.1, Mr Oluwafemi Ajayi – NeSC.
• Jipu Jiang, NeSC, University of Glasgow
See section 2.19, Mr Jipu Jiang – NeSC.
• Anthony Stell, NeSC, University of Glasgow
See section 2.36, Mr Anthony Stell – NeSC.
Events
6
GGF15, GGF16, GGF18, OGF20, OGF21, OGF22
Roles
10
Chair OGSA-DAI User Group (GGF18)
Co-chair – Authz Interoperation Demos (OGF22)
Organiser – OGSA-DAI User Forum (OGF20, OGF21)
Presenter – Authz Interoperation Demos (OGF22)
Presenter – GGF/OGF and the Future/GridNet3 (OGF21)
Presenter – Shib+Grid Work at NeSC, Glasgow (GGF16, GGF18)
Presenter – Shibboleth Protection and Management of Workflows (OGF20)
Presenter – Use of Middleware in nanoCMOS (OGF21)
Publications
3
Conference Documents
Advanced Security for Virtual Organizations: The Pros and Cons of
Centralized vs Decentralized Security Models (CCGrid 2008)
Advanced Security Infrastructures for Grid Education (WMSCI 2006)
Supporting Decentralized, Security focused Dynamic Virtual Organizations
across the Grid (2nd IEEE Conference on e-Science and Grid Computing)
Areas of
interest
36
Authz Interoperation (OGF22)
caGrid (GGF16, OGF21)
CA-OPS-WG (GGF16)
DAIS-WG (OGF21)
Data Management Workshop (OGF22)
Dynamic Agreements and Negotiation - GRAAP (GGF18)
Encyclopedia of Life (OGF22)
Enterprise Grid Requirements (GGF18)
Page 50
2 GridNet2 Member Summaries
No.
Description
Entertainment and Digital Content (GGF15)
e-Science and CyberInfrastructure (GGF15)
Financial Services Workshop (OGF22)
Grid Education and Training (GGF16)
Grid Interoperability (OGF21)
Grid Usage and Productivity (OGF22)
GridNet2 workshop (OGF21)
Leveraging Site Infrastructure for Multi-Site Grids (GGF15)
LSG-RG (GGF16, OGF21)
OGSA Data Architecture (OGF21)
OGSA-Authz WG (GGF15, OGF21, OGF22)
OGSA-DAI User Forum (OGF20, OGF21)
OGSA-RUS Specification (OGF22)
OMII Europe and UK (OGF21)
Pharma, Biotech and Life Sciences Workshop (OGF22)
Pharmaceutical Grid Requirements (GGF18)
SAGA Overview (OGF20)
Security Area Meeting (GGF16, GGF18, OGF21, OGF22)
Semantic Grid (GGF16)
Semiconductor/EDA Grid Requirements (GGF18)
Shibboleth (GGF16, GGF18)
Standards All Hands Meeting (OGF21)
Unified Grid Logging and Security Auditing (OGF20)
VPMAN Project (OGF20)
Web 2.0 Social Networking for MSI Researchers (OGF21)
What is the Software Licensing Model for Grids (GGF15, OGF20)
Why Leading IT Organizations Are Adopting Grids (GGF15)
Workflow Sharing (OGF20)
Claim
97
117
Awarded: £16,000
Claimed: £14,106.08
To see the full details of Prof Sinnott’s GridNet2 activities, see section 3.34,
Prof Richard Sinnott – NeSC.
2.35
Mr David Spence – STFC
Table 38: GridNet2 Summary for David Spence
No.
Description
People
2
Mr David Spence, STFC (Rutherford Appleton Laboratory)
Events
1
GGF18
Page 51
2 GridNet2 Member Summaries
No.
Description
Roles
1
Presenter – ShibGrid Progress
Publications
0
Areas of
interest
6
Firewall Issues RG
IGTF Issues
OGSA Authz WG
Security Talks
Topics in Identity Management
Towards Worldwide Grid User Support
Claim
114
Awarded: £4,500
Claimed: £4,478.07
To see the full details of Mr Spence’s GridNet2 activities, see section 3.35, Mr
David Spence – STFC.
2.36
Mr Anthony Stell – NeSC
Mr Stell was supported by Richard Sinnott’s GridNet2 award (97).
Table 39: GridNet2 Summary for Anthony Stell
No.
Description
People
1
Mr Anthony Stell, NeSC, Glasgow
Events
1
GGF16
Roles
0
Publications
2
Conference Documents
Advanced Security for Virtual Organizations: The Pros and Cons of
Centralized vs Decentralized Security Models (CCGrid 2008)
Advanced Security Infrastructures for Grid Education (WMSCI 2006)
Areas of
interest
7
Grid Authorization Interoperability workshop
Grid Education and Training workshop
GT4 Status and Experiences
OGSA Authz WG
OGSA-DAI Technology and Update
Security and Privacy Needs for Health Grids
Shibboleth
Claim
97
For more information, see section 2.34, Prof Richard Sinnott - .
To see the full details of Mr Stell’s GridNet2 activities, see section3.36, Mr
Anthony Stell – NeSC.
Page 52
2 GridNet2 Member Summaries
2.37
Dr Ian Taylor – Cardiff
Table 40: GridNet2 Summary for Ian Taylor
No.
Description
People
1
Dr Ian Taylor, Cardiff University
Events
4
GGF18, OGF20, OGF21, OGF22
Roles
9
Chair for the APP-AGG-RG (GGF18)
Co-chair – WFM-RG (OGF20, OGF21, OGF22)
Co-organiser GridNet2 workshop (OGF21)
Organiser for the APP-AGG-RG workshop (GGF18)
Presenter – Current Status of WFM-RG (OGF22)
Presenter – Introduction GridNet2 e-Science workshop (OGF21)
Presenter – Sharing Workflows (OGF20)
Publications
0
Areas of
interest
11
SAGA WG (GGF 18)
EU Funding Round Table (GGF18)
OGSA WG (GGF18)
Life Science Grid RG (GGF18)
OGSA Workflow (OGF20)
WFM-RG (OGF20, OGF22)
e-Arts and e-Humanities – e-Science Technologies and Methodologies in
Arts and Humanities Research (OGF20)
Evolution of Grids Towards Service Oriented Knowledge Utilities (OGF20)
Sharing Workflows and Interoperability (OGF21)
Web 2.0 Meets Grids (OGF21)
e-Social Science: our Spaces (OGF21)
108
131
Claim
Awarded: £4,500
Claimed: £4,496.30
To see the full details of Dr Taylor’s GridNet2 activities, see section 3.37, Dr
Ian Taylor – Cardiff.
2.38
Mr Elias Theocharopoulos – NeSC
Mr Elias Theocharopoulos was funded by Dr Steven Newhouse’s GridNet2
award (99).
Table 41: GridNet2 Summary for Elias Theocharopoulos
People
No.
Description
1
Mr Elias Theocharopoulos
Page 53
2 GridNet2 Member Summaries
No.
Description
Events
1
OGF22
Roles
0
Publications
0
Areas of
interest
11
Data Management Workshop
Encyclopedia of Life
Infrastructure Management – eBay
OGC-OGF Collaboration Workshop
OGSA Authz (OGF22)
OGSA Data Architecture – Future Directions
Porting Applications with Globus Gridway
SAGA – The Simple API for Grid Applications
SAGA Java Language Binding
SAGA+DAIS: Next Steps
WFM-RG
Claim
99
See section 2.27, Dr Steven Newhouse – OMII-UK.
To see the full details of Mr Theocharopoulos’ GridNet2 activities, see section
3.38, Mr Elias Theocharopoulos - NeSC.
2.39
Dr David Wallom – Oxford
Table 42: GridNet2 Summary for David Wallom
No.
Description
People
1
Dr David Wallom, Oxford University e-Research Centre
Events
3
GGF18, OGF20, OGF22
Roles
6
Co-chair – 2nd International Workshop on Campus and Community Grids,
continuing interoperability (OGF20)
Co-chair – Topics in Grid Management (GGF18)
Co-chair – Software Licensing for Grids (OGF20)
Panel Participant – The Astronomical Virtual Observatory – Building
Operational Services on Pervasive Grids: Standards in Use (OGF20)
Presenter – Opening Session: OGF-Europe (OGF22)
Presenter – University of Oxford Campus Grid (OGF20)
Publications
2
Workshop on Grid Applications: From Early Adopters to Mainstream Users
(ID)
2nd International Workshop on Campus and Community Grids (ID)
Page 54
2 GridNet2 Member Summaries
Areas of
interest
No.
Description
22
Application Domains (OGF20)
Astronomical Virtual Observatory (OGF20)
Campus Grids RG BoF and Workshop ( OGF20)
Cloud Systems BoF (OGF22)
Creating a Standard Software API for Data Grid Management Systems BoF
(OGF22)
Daonity: Trusted Computing Enhanced GSI (GGF18)
Data Management (OGF20, OGF22)
Encyclopedia of Life (OGF22)
Enterprise and Standards Summit (GGF18)
Financial Services Workshop (OGF22)
GIN-CG (GGF18, OGF22)
GIR-WG (OGF22)
Grid Management (GGF18)
HPC Profile (GGF18)
HPCBP Specification Adoption (OGF22)
OGF Marketing (OGF22)
OMII-Europe (OGF22)
PGS-RG (GGF18)
Rule-Based Preservation Environments (OGF22)
Software Licensing (OGF20)
Storage Grids in Healthcare (GGF18)
UR-WG (GGF18, OGF20)
Claim
110
113
Awarded: £6,300
Claimed: £2,824.88
To see the full details of Dr Wallom’s GridNet2 activities, see section 3.39, Dr
David Wallom – OeRC.
2.40
Dr Viktor Yarmolenko – Manchester
Table 43: GridNet2 Summary for Viktor Yarmolenko
No.
Description
People
1
Dr Viktor Yarmolenko, School of Computer Science, University of
Manchester
Events
1
SLA F2F
Roles
2
Organiser – SLA F2F
Presenter – Open Issues in SLAs for Workflows
Publications
0
Page 55
2 GridNet2 Member Summaries
Areas of
interest
No.
Description
2
SLAs
Workflows
Award: £1,000
Claimed: £993.44
Claim
To see the full details of Dr Yarmolenko’s GridNet2 activities, see section 3.40,
Dr Viktor Yarmolenko – Manchester.
2.41
Mr Stefan Zasada – UCL
Table 44: GridNet2 Summary for Stefan Zasada
No.
Description
People
1
Mr Stefan Zasada, Centre for Computational Science, University College
London
Events
1
OGF20
Roles
0
Publications
0
Areas of
interest
9
EGEE Applications
GIN-CG
JSDL-WG
OGSA EMS Information Service
OGSA-BES-WG
OGSA-RSS-WG
SAGA
Vendor and Developer Adoption of OGF Standards
Workflow Sharing
Claim
118
Award: £3,000
Claimed: £2,459.70
To see the full details of Mr Zasada’s GridNet2 activities, see section 3.41, Mr
Stefan Zasada – UCL.
2.42
Dr Ning Zhang – Manchester
Table 45: GridNet2 Summary for Ning Zhang
No.
Description
People
1
Dr Ning Zhang, University of Manchester
Events
2
OGF19, OGF20
Page 56
2 GridNet2 Member Summaries
Roles
No.
Description
4
Chair – LoA BoF (OGF19)
Co-chair – LoA RG (OGF20)
Organiser – LoA BoF (OGF19)
Presenter – Federated Identity workshop (OGF19)
Publications
0
Areas of
interest
7
Federated Identity (OGF19)
LoA BoF and RG (OGF19, OGF20)
OGSA Authz WG (OGF19)
OGSA Express Authn Security Profile (OGF20)
OGSA Security (OGF19)
SAGA Security (OGF19)
Security Area Meeting (OGF19)
Claim
123
Awarded: £2,000
Claimed: £2,000
To see the full details of Dr Zhang’s GridNet2 activities, see section 3.42, Dr
Ning Zhang – Manchester.
Page 57
3 GridNet2 Reports
3
GridNet2 Reports
This section lists the reports submitted by those who applied for and received
GridNet2 funding.
Reports are listed in alphabetical order by the last name for the person who
received the GridNet2 funding award.
Some awards covered funding for more than one person. In this case, if each
person covered by the award has submitted a report, reports are listed for
each person covered by the award. If only one person has submitted reports
covering all recipients, the reports are listed under the submitter’s name only.
3.1
Mr Oluwafemi Ajayi
– NeSC
Mr Oluwafemi Ajyai is a PhD student at NeSC,
Glasgow.
For a summary of Mr Ajayi’s GridNet2 activities, see
section 2.1, Mr Oluwafemi Ajayi – NeSC.
Mr Ahjayi was covered by Prof Richard Sinnott’s
GridNet2 award. For more information, see section
2.34 Prof Richard Sinnott - NeSC.
3.1.1
GGF16
More participation is required to complete in earnest
the objectives of the workgroup. Mr Ajayi also
recommended existing solutions should be further
investigated with respect to the existing agreed usecases. Solutions like ShibGrid, the interoperability of
VOMS and Shibboleth should be further investigated.
Lastly, attributes and metadata that are common to
the Grid community need to be deliberated to achieve
security interoperability.
Grid Interoperation:
The meeting focused on how interoperation and
interoperability can be achieved on the Grid. Four
areas considered for interoperability included:
Summary
•
Security
For Mr Ajayi, GGF 16 was largely a success, but he
stated that more cooperation, collaboration and
commitment are required from group members if any
meaningful achievements are to be seen. It is
recommended that task reports from previous GGF
meetings should be required and presented in GGF
meetings. Similarly, schedules, where possible,
should be made for tasks that were agreed upon
during meetings, as there seems to be a lack of
continuity and commitment from previous meetings
in some workgroups.
•
Jobs submission
•
Data management
•
Resource discovery
Specific recommendations for group meetings Mr
Ajayi attended are included in this report. The
recommendations range from attributes/schema
mappings to refined and clear use-cases for OGSADAI, ShibGrid and LSG-WG.
OGSA-Authz-WG
The meeting was chaired by David Chadwick and
some significant progress was made; mostly the need
for a CVS. Distinctions were made between the
authenticity and validity of credentials. Similarity
between Microsoft’s STS and CVS were pointed out,
suggesting a need for validation standards in the Grid
community.
The meeting also saw the call for context parameters
to augment existing agreed security parameters:
subject, action, target and environment. The need for
context is easily emphasised in a dynamic
environment where security requirements for access
roles changes from time to time. Although a
consensus was not reached for the inclusion of
context attributes at the meeting, Mr Ajayi supports it
and believes it is an attribute that still needs to be
considered and included in the final workgroup
release.
Page 58
It was noted that significant progress is being made
in the area of interoperation while a lot needs to be
done to achieve interoperability. Interoperation
exists where multiple machines from multiple
vendors communicate with one another, which at
present is being achieved through commonly agreed
specifications and procedures. Interoperability is
currently being seen as the ability of software and
Grid applications working together seamlessly.
Interoperability is deemed to be achievable where
agreements on tools and framework can be reached.
All four interoperability areas were discussed, but the
security area was the one that drew Mr Ajayi’s
attention. Security issues regarding authentication
and identity management were discussed, as follows:
•
Certificate recognition
•
Missing gridmap file entries
•
Cross boundary validation
•
Trust and security cracks despite common GSI
and PMAs
Similarly, authorisation issues were deliberated
upon. It was recommended that authorisation
services should not be too close to services as it
currently is. It was also suggested that SAML should
be considered in future upgrades of existing
technologies, which will go a long way in improving
interoperability.
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.1 Mr Oluwafemi Ajayi – NeSC
ShibGrid
The ShibGrid meeting focused on the interoperability
of Shibboleth with existing Grid security
infrastructures like VOMS, CAS and PERMIS. The
meeting was chaired by Von Welch. The meeting also
saw the presence of an Internet 2 development team
member which guided the group on forthcoming
Shibboleth releases and functionalities. Shibboleth
issues, such as identity provider discovery and service
delegation that makes interoperability with existing
Grid applications, were discussed and listed for
further investigations against the next GGF meeting.
Other issues listed for investigation against next
meeting included: refined VO definition, VO
management interoperability, names mapping, shibportal architecture and VO-VO federation.
Names mapping, shib-portal architecture and VO-VO
federation recommendations were being investigated
in Glasgow and the team in Glasgow continued to
research and deploy models to test and resolve these
issues. The existing Glasgow projects where these
recommendations are being investigated include
ESP-Grid, VOTES, BRIDGES and DyVOSE.
CAOPS-WG
The main focus in this meeting was on augmenting
the proposed standard to support revocation of proxy
credentials without resorting to the brute method of
revoking the user certificate. Other issues on OCSP
draft were discussed, such as conformance of other
standards to the proposed OCSP and the time latency
for certificate revocation referenced to the draft.
LSG-WG
There was little progress made in the Life Science
Group meeting because interest in the group vision
was lacking by the attendees. In Mr Ajayi’s opinion,
this was probably due to exhaustion from previous
meetings. There was also little continuation or
feedback from previous meetings to this meeting. The
reason for this was not entirely clear to Mr Ajayi as
this was his first GGF meeting. However, from the
deliberation that occurred, it appeared that the
workgroup requirements were not understood by
majority of the participants.
It was recommended by a caGrid member and a
member of Mr Ajayi’s VOTES team that use cases for
Healthcare & Life Science security requirements
should be shared on the mailing list before the next
GGF meeting. Conclusions were reached and Richard
Sinnott of the VOTES team agreed to make use cases
from VOTES project available before the next GGF
meeting. The team will be making the uses cases
available over the next few weeks.
3.1.2
GGF18
Mr Ajayi attended participated in the community and
standards sessions at GGF18.
Enterprise Grid Requirements
interoperability issues between organisations from a
security perspective. The session kicked off with
reviews from work being done by the working groups.
The working groups include the following groups
•
Reference model
•
Computing provisioning
•
Data provisioning
•
Security
•
Utility accounting
To facilitate interoperability, a reference model that
enables enterprise partners to interoperate was
discussed. The group introduce a Grid management
entity (GME) which is a collection of interconnected
(network) Grid components. As part of GME a
reference model comprised of resource provisioning,
management and deployment was highlighted. It
seemed obvious that ontologies will be an important
part of inter-enterprise collaboration. Similarly, some
use cases for the reference model were considered
and proposed.
Shibboleth for Grids
In the second session, the first talk was given by
Richard Sinnott on the use of Shibboleth on DyVose
and GLASS projects at Glasgow University. Another
project Shibbolised at Glasgow was the VOTES
project which Mr Ajayi is actively involved in. The
talked showed how Grid resources could be
Shibboleth-enabled. The second talk was by Mike
Jones from Manchester University and he gave a
detailed architectural view of how they have
implemented Shibboleth and their experiences with
Shibboleth in the SHEBANGS project. Some
implementation issues as regards identity assertions
were raised and also on how certificates exchanged
using Shibboleth could be made into a GSI
certificates. Other issues were raised such as
mod_shib exported environment,
attributes/assertion reuse and inadequate Shibboleth
configuration information. Another presentation was
by David Chadwick who gave a demonstration of
policy wizard and policy editor for the creation of
deployable policies by developers or non-developers
alike. The relevance of this presentation was not
immediately understood in the context of Shibboleth
but was later clarified with further discussions in the
context of exchanging assertions between PERMIS
protected resources.
Nathan Klingenstein from Internet2 gave an update
of shibboleth developments at Internet2 and what
should be expected in the next Shibboleth releases.
Another talk was on X.509 and SAML 2.0, which
covered how SAML/Shibboleth assertions could be
translated to X.509 like DNs and attributes (that is,
Shibboleth to VOMS and vice versa). Some of the
noted issues at the end of the sessions included:
Shibboleth-CA requirements; binding SAML to
X.509; and need for attribute vocabularies (for
example, names & namespaces for GridPerson).
The session was a follow up of the work done since
the last GGF, which focused on carefully crafting
requirements that would support interoperability at
enterprise levels. The first technical work done so far
was released in July and a subsequent update was
due imminently and would cover enterprise Grid
security such as threats/risks, use cases and
requirements. Mr Ajayi found the session to be of
value as the focus of his work at NeSC involved
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3.2 Dr Mario Antonioletti - EPCC
Grid Resource Allocation and
Agreement Protocol (GRAAP) WG –
Session 3
Mr Ajayi joined this session because of his current
research interest in federated trust negotiations on
the Grid. True to the set objective, the session gave
the current status of dynamic agreements and
negotiation in GRAAP. The workgroup focused on
resource negotiation as opposed to security
credentials; however, credentials are indeed
resources that need to be negotiated, hence the
relevance. The workgroup was a step away from
WS-Agreement but it was noticeable that little was
understood on the subject area and on how to turn it
into a specification. Most of the discussions were on
how to modify an agreement after an agreement has
been reached. Notable points from the discussion
were: what modifications might be allowed; when
they could be allowed; and what should trigger the
modifications. In all, dynamic agreements remain an
active area of interest and some use cases /
requirements are still being developed.
Mr Ajayi found the life science research group session
particularly noteworthy because of the enormous
quantity of work being done in storage Grids as
regards healthcare and life sciences. Based on his last
LSG-RG participation at GGF16 in Athens, the LSGRG at GGF18 was more rewarding as, for example,
Richard Bakalar presented IBM’s experiences with
life science and healthcare solutions, which led on to
further discussion. Bakalar emphasised requirements
such as high availability, data integrity, reliability,
and collaboration through health care teams. The key
lesson from the IBM experience was the use of fixed
content over IP networks in order to achieve high
availability and reliability of data. The BYCAST
solution was also presented in the session. BYCAST
also uses fixed content techniques over IP networks
to deliver availability and dependability. The
availability and reliability techniques learnt from
these LSG-RG sessions will be explored in the VOTES
project that Mr Ajayi is working on at NeSC.
All in all, Mr Ajayi found this a useful OGF meeting
and expects to continue to participate actively in the
above groups.
OGF20
Mr Ajayi attended the following key sessions/forum
at OGF20:
•
Grids Means Business
•
Dynamic Service Level Agreement
•
OGSA-DAI User Forum
The keynote speech delivered by Tony Heys
emphasised some of the trust management work that
Mr Ajayi and his team have been doing at NESC. In
his speech, Heys talked about how customers want
services like Amazon ID, Google ID, and MS Passport
to interoperate so that data can be accessed and
shared. This work area remains important as the
open community continues to develop open
standards such as SAML, Shibboleth and XACML.
The OGSA-Authz group is currently investigating
interoperability between these standards.
Page 60
At the first session of Grid Means Business, a speaker
from eBay presented some architectural lessons
based on their Grid-integrated platforms. The talk
shows how Grid applications could be developed to
better meet business needs. One lesson concerned the
importance of minimising dependencies during
application development. Another lesson was about
resilience and scalability, and virtualisation was
suggested as a method of providing this.
At the security session of Grid Means Business, it was
argued that security management in Grids remains a
challenge. Mike Boniface discussed the need for site
independence in VO security management. For
example, when a site is compromised, every other site
should be able to decide independently how they
want to mitigate the risk. At the session,
organisational structure and legal frameworks were
revealed as some problems facing federation
(WSfederation, WS-trust, WS-policy, and WSexchange).
Dynamic Service Level Agreements
Workshops
LSG-RG
3.1.3
Grids Mean Business
Owing to its relevance to Mr Ajayi’s work at NeSC, he
attended the dynamic service level agreement
workshops. At the meeting, WS-Agreement for
negotiating service level agreement (SLA) was
discussed. Various scenarios and requirements were
presented and discussed, such as those from
OntoGrid, NextGrid and Alcatel-Lucent. The meeting
raised questions such as credential negotiation and
negotiation strategies. This aspect of negotiation ties
with Mr Ajayi’s work on trust negotiation at NeSC.
OGSA-DAI User Forum
Lastly, as part of the Glasgow NeSC team, Mr Ajayi
gave a talk at OGSA-DAI user forum on his
experience with OGSA-DAI. At the forum, Mr Ajyai
discussed some of the improvements that the team at
NeSC would like to see it the next OGSA-DAI release.,
Some of the suggestions are already planned for next
release.
In all, OGF 20 was useful for Mr Ajayi.
3.2
Dr Mario
Antonioletti - EPCC
Dr Mario Antonioletti is Principal Consultant at the
EPCC. Dr Mario Antonioletti was funded by Dr
Steven Newhouse’s GridNet2 award.
For a summary of Dr Antonioletti’s GridNet2
activities, see section 2.2, Dr Mario Antonioletti –
EPCC.
3.2.1
OGF22
Dr Antonioletti attended the following sessions at
OGF22:
•
Opening Session
•
SAGA, Java Language Bindings
•
OMII-Europe: Using open standards to deliver
interoperability
•
OGSA-DMI Discussion of Specification
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.2 Dr Mario Antonioletti - EPCC
•
OGSA-Data Architecture Future Directions
OGSA-D-WG
•
DFDL-WG Progress Report
•
Keynote: What OGF Can Do For Enterprises
•
HPCP Specification Adoption
•
GIN-CG: Specification Adoptions & Discussions
•
Globus Software User Experiences
Dr Antonioletti was also involved in the OGSA-D-WG
which produced an informational document last
December (GFD.121) which fleshed out the data part
of OGSA. Both of the WG chairs – Dave Berry and
Allen Luniewski – resigned, having completed what
the group charter set out to do. Nevertheless the
group felt there were other tasks that needed to be
considered. For more information, see:
•
SAGA + DAIS: Next Steps
•
Creating a standard software API for Data Grid
Management Systems BoF
•
The Encyclopedia of Life: A Web page for every
species
•
SRM 2.2 protocol review
•
Keynote: Cloud Computing, Grids and the
upcoming Cambrian Explosion in IT
•
Cloud Systems BoF (1/2)
•
DAIS-WG Session
•
Town Hall Part 2
•
Grid Usage and Productivity in HPC
•
Data Management Workshop
SAGA Java API
Dr Antonioletti attended the SAGA Java API, in part
because some of this work was funded by OMII-UK.
It also had some relevance to the DAIS-WG, for
which he was co-chair, and a DAIS joint meeting that
was to be held at OGF later on in the week. SAGA, if
successful, would provide a strong incentive for folks
to use the Grid and as such was important for all
concerned.
OMII-Europe
Dr Antonioletti attended the OMII-Europe session as
he had been previously been involved in this project
– sadly the project did not appear to be getting a
continuation in funding just as it was beginning to
make an impact. The objective was to try and
maintain some of the infrastructure in case the
project did get some continuation funding. There are
a number of items that were developed by OMIIEurope that are of interest to the OGSA-DAI project.
OGSA DMI
OGSA-DMI is a group that Dr Antonioletti had been
involved in previously. He took over as co-chair from
Michel Drescher, with Ravi Madduri from ANL, after
Drescher found that he would not be able to continue
in that position after other commitments made it
difficult for him to dedicate the amount of time. On
the whole, the DMI group has run smoothly and the
specification recommendation went into public phase
mode during this OGF. There is some commitment to
do implementations from Globus, Unicore, Fujitsu
and Microsoft to try to get the specification to full
recommendation status. If successful, it could be
adopted by other groups such as HPC Profile and
JSDL to handle some of the file staging requirements.
http://forge.gridforum.org/sf/go/doc15052?nav=1)
Dr Antonioletti gave a presentation that:
•
Provided a brief overview of what had been done
by the group.
•
Outlined some of the perceived gaps and future
avenues of work.
•
Attempted to drum up support for someone to
take over the chair role.
Although there was some interest, and other areas
were pointed out as worthy of investigation, no-one
volunteered to take on this role. It looks as though
the OGSA-D-WG work will go into hibernation until
someone else wants to take the leadership role.
DFDL-WG
Dr Antonioletti attended the DFDL-WG session –
Martin Westhead, one of the co-chairs, used to be at
EPCC. It looks like the work is making progress
despite the fact that they do not have many spare
cycles. This work could be of interest, once it is
completed, as a means of describing binary data
which could be used in many different directions.
SAGA+DAIS
The SAGA+DAIS session was another attempt by
SAGA to try and get some SAGA APIs for DAIS. Dr
Antonioletti gave an overview presentation of what
DAIS is as it has been confused with OGSA-DAI.
There has been previous dialogue with the SAGA
group – at OGF19 - but nothing came of it as there
were no spare cycles to do anything. It did not seem
apt at the time as there were no DAIS
implementations, but it now appeared that that was
beginning to change. An overview of SAGA was given
and also of the current DAIS RDF work. The SAGA
group was looking for use cases that can be used to
inform an API. The DAIS-WG undertook to produce a
number of these to pass on to the SAGA-WG to try
and begin the process of generating an API.
Standard API for Data Grid
Management Systems BoF
The SAGA group was out in force at the standard API
for Data Grid Management Systems BoF. The SAGA
group maintained that a lot of the proposed
functionality may already be available through their
APIs. Arun, who chaired the session, is going to talk
to them and try to organise another BoF at a future
OGF.
Encyclopedia of Life
The Encyclopedia of Life (www.eol.org) was
presented by an ex-colleague, Jen Schopf. Her team’s
current work was really high profile. Dr Antonioletti
noted how they are very pragmatic about the
technologies and standards they use.
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3.3 Prof Malcolm Atkinson – NeSC
Cloud Computing
Dr Antonioletti found the cloud effort to be a little
disturbing. From what he could make out, cloud
computing was just a Grid but with a higher level of
abstraction, which might potentially make it easier to
use. This might be the next big thing, but it just
appeared to be Grid computing in disguise.
DAIS-WG
As one of the co-chairs of the OGSA-DAI WG, Dr
Antonioletti presented an overview of DAIS. The
DAIS-WG has been in existence for a while now. Amy
Krause, on behalf of the Ohio State University,
presented an overview of the issues they ran into
when trying to implement the WS-DAIX candidate
recommendation. There were some tooling issues
and also a lack of spare cycles. This was followed by
Elias Theocharopoulos giving an overview of the
OGSA-DAI issues that have been encountered when
implementing the WS-DAIX candidate
recommendation. This caused a lot of animated
discussion which overran its time slot so the
overviews of the RDF/RDF-S work had to be quickly
glossed over and the session, as a whole, overran. It
had to be drawn to a premature conclusion so people
could attend the town hall meeting. The DAIS-WG
was established by OGSA-DAI folks and at some
level, it is still important to this project. There are a
number of other middleware providers that are
interested in implementing the WS-DAIR candidate
specification and the RDF/RDF-S specialisations are
very near completion.
staff time, Mark Linesch’s time and much of the time
of senior GFSG members. Nevertheless, Prof
Atkinson endorsed the move on the basis of the
argument that sponsors would not accept paying for
both organisations. In hindsight, they had already
stopped paying for EGA. The formal agreements, led
by Jay Unger, as a new constitution were progressing
well, but were dogged by legal and tax issues peculiar
to the USA.
Some time was spent reviewing the presentation and
public image of GGF. The OGSA was seen to be a
central coordinating framework – as intended – but
GFSG was impatient about the rate of progress and
definitive statements. This seemed to Prof Atkinson
to be underestimating the difficulty of such
coordinating architectures. Prof Atkinson reiterated
his usual plea that SAGA was also a vital integrating
influence which has high value in reducing the
redundant, highly skilled software work that moves
Grid applications.
The review of the strengths of the areas and their
groups received very little attention. This is
unfortunate as they are the GGF’s principal product
and raison d’être.
It was good to have a number of side-bar discussions
with other GFSG members on the state of Grid
computing and technical progress. Many of these
people Prof Atkinson would not meet anywhere else
and would not be able to find out their views.
3.3.2
GGF16 and GFSG
Data Management Workshop
GFSG
The Data Management workshop was interesting in
giving a broad perspective of what is happening in
the data space. Of particular note, though, was Paul
Strong’s overview of how eBay works (sadly, the
slides are not on-line). A number of impressive
statistics were covered in his presentation. They do
not depend on standards, which rely on the least
common denominator, to achieve their impressive
throughput and this does not always allow them to
exploit vendor-specific optimisations. They seem to
be keen to adopt standards at some future point but
as with the EoL group, they take a very pragmatic
approach.
The GFSG meeting was well attended and followed
on from the recent F2F in San Francisco so that the
topics and distribution of time was much as described
for the previous meetings. These same topics had
dominated the weekly telcons for several months and
it was very clear that this was diverting attention
from standards and perhaps to community
development.
3.3
Prof Malcolm
Atkinson – NeSC
Prof Malcolm Atkinson is Director of the e-Science
Institute at the National e-Science Centre,
Edinburgh, and is also the e-Science Envoy for the
UK’s e-Science Core Programme.
For a summary of Prof Atkinson’s GridNet2 activities,
see 2.3, Prof Malcolm Atkinson – NeSC.
3.3.1
GFSG F2F
Prof Atkinson attended the GFSG F2F meeting held
in January 2006.
The primary topic of GFSG was, as it had been for
some time, the merger of GGF with the Enterprise
Grid Alliance (EGA). This took the lion’s share of the
day – discussing the new structure, new governance
model and ways of presenting the new organisation.
It seemed to Prof Atkinson that GGF was being
significantly perturbed for very little gain. The issue
was clearly absorbing a large proportion of the GGF
Page 62
A review of the topics to be covered in the opening
and town meeting had to manage the flow of publicity
as well as sustaining the volunteer commitment. This
is a difficult balancing act, particularly when also
seeking to avoid ruffling any sponsors.
GGF16
Prof Atkinson is Area Director for Data Area and the
following covers his view of progress in the Data
Area. It was not possible for him to attend all the WG
sessions for the Data Area at GGF16.
Being in Europe, the OGF sessions were well
attended and it was pleasing to see plenty of work in
the data area. The INFO-D -G seemed to be a little
esoteric, more like a research group at times, but it
was beginning to limit its scope and develop focus
with planned applications. There was some
continuation between the generic work on naming
that is emerging as a requirement in OGSA and the
particular melding of naming with file management
in the GFS-WG. The DAIS-WG was making good
progress on wrapping up its initial three proposals
and developing a plan for interoperability testing.
Steve Pickles was particularly helpful in advising the
DAIS-WG on how to address this task. It became
clear that this was pioneering new territory for GGF.
It was frustrating not to have systematic work on
distributed data management, including replication
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.3 Prof Malcolm Atkinson – NeSC
and caching, but it had not been possible to get the
relevant parties to work together. The OGSA-D-WG,
led by Dave Berry, was, however, establishing a vision
of requirements and a framework as to how these
may be met. The GridFTP story was complete and
the standard had become widely used, but the
necessary experience report was not forthcoming to
turn it from recommendation to a standard.
The work on Grid storage management, which is the
umbrella for standards shaping the Storage Resource
manager (SRM) and is widely used by experimental
particle physics, was very active but not particularly
concerned with delivering a final document yet.
Progress on DFDL was slow, which was a pity as it is
a very important approach to efficient, interoperable
data access. The generic requirement of a data
movement request abstraction was beginning to be
recognised by both the GSM and GridFTP groups.
Prof Atkinson was also acting as initiator for the work
on training and education. David Fergusson and Prof
Atkinson had organised a workshop and BoF on Grid
education, partially motivated by the imminent start
of the FP6 ICEAGE project. The workshop and BoF
were very well attended with a lot of energy and
promise of commitment. David Fergusson and Prof
Atkinson therefore resolved to propose the formation
of a Training and Education group. Prof Atkinson
has managed to get this as one of the named goals of
the new organisation.
Prof Atkinson used all of the opportunities available,
including an announcement at the Town Hall
meeting, to advertise ISSGC06, which is endorsed by
GGF who provide administrative help through Ann
Colins.
Overall, Prof Aktkinson found this to be a successful
and effective GGF meeting with much going on
throughout the whole day on each day of the meeting
that was driving forward the Grid agenda on many
fronts. It was a little surprising to experience a dust
storm from the Sahara while in Athens.
3.3.3
GGF17
GGF17 and the integrated GFSG meeting were held in
Tokyo, and the public transport adventure of getting
to the GFSG proved surprisingly easy despite the
profusion of lines and platforms in this immense and
complicated network; thanks to punctual schedules,
clear English notices and, above all, Satoshi
Matsuoko’s careful instructions and meticulous
preparation. He was a wonderful host throughout
the event.
The GFSG was, once again, dominated by the
practicalities of the transition to the merged OGF.
There is a considerable challenge keeping
arrangements developing without going public. The
Enterprise community still seems to be misguided in
their belief that GGF, a standards organisation, can
do market building. This is inheriting the worst
features of EGA and it does not deliver a programme
that will convince anybody, as the unconvinced would
not attend GGF/OGF meetings – another misguided
distraction. Worse, they have the notion that they
can gather requirements that the standards groups
will implement. There are two intractable problems
with this, as follows:
1. The discussions are invariably at a generic level
which fails to capture the detail needed for
standards and usually concerns the composed
functions that depend on the integration of many
standards.
2. The work in standards working groups has
usually started with collection, collation and
analysis of requirements, and they then have a
momentum that will not be diverted, and should
not be, until the standard is produced.
These are symptomatic of challenges for GGF (or any
similar SDO), as follows.
1. It is very hard to recruit and sustain the efforts of
technical experts relevant to a standard.
2. It is very hard to steer volunteers to do anything
other than the work which they originally came to
GGF to undertake.
Usually, this work is for one or two specific
standards that warrant the allocation of their
time in the judgement of themselves and their
employers.
3. Standards require development of consensus,
documents that describe accurately that
consensus, and reports from independent
implementations that show the standards in use.
Those not engaged in standards development
invariably grow impatient and denigrate the
effort because they do not appreciate the need for
this elapsed time to cover the whole process.
So, for it to be a benefit, the formation of OGF must
address these issues. In particular, it must generate
effort from industry that includes experts working on
standards. If industry requires standards, it must be
prepared to invest in them. Though there are
promising signs that Microsoft will invest in the
OGSA execution model HPC profile, there is no
general commitment. Paul Strang is clearly a very
helpful, powerful intellect with commitment and
deep experience, but there is a very real dearth of
prospects in the data area despite many data
companies being in the EGA.
Switching to sessions, the DAIS-WG meetings and
the OGSA-DAI workshop were a great success as the
very strong local community, led by Isao Kojima, was
very active. In particular, they had well developed
experience with RDF extensions to OGSA-DAI in
order to hold biomedical semantic data. This led to a
commitment to develop an RDF version of the WSDAI specification. Prof Atkinson was also delighted
to hear that OGSA-DAI is a key component of
NAREGI and in production use for their Grid
information system.
Looking at the Data Area as a whole, Prof Atkinson’s
view as Area Director was that this was a most
productive meeting. Though the number of people
present was reduced, the number of active and
effective standards workers was not – and they were
not distracted by explaining things to people who
only show up once. (There does seem to be some
case for constraining participation, at least in
formulating and drafting standards, to those who
have read the WG’s documents and informed
themselves of the relevant background.)
The INFO-D-WG was particularly productive after a
pre-meeting. The BYTE-IO-WG was making
spectacular progress on requirements sparked by
DAIS and OGSA-DAI. Professor Atkinson stated that
Neil Chue Hong and his colleagues from Virginia
were to be congratulated.
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3.3 Prof Malcolm Atkinson – NeSC
Overall, all of the standards areas seemed very
productive – possibly a demonstration of the
‘mythical man month’ effects. The talk on OGSA by
Hiro Hishimoto was excellent and made it
exceptionally clear why an overwhelming framework
in which to build standards is reliable. Though it had
rapidly advancing profiles (specific realisations),
there was still a lack of realism in the impatience
about progress. David Snelling clearly understood
and balanced the issues, but Mark Linesch was keen
to pick just one ‘silver bullet’ to demonstrate GGF’s
value.
Prof Atkinson still felt much more should be made of
APIs, particularly the work of the SAGA-WG, as
immediate gains can be made in productivity and
portability through stable APIs.
The putative group on Education and Training held
another BoF, with much energy and enthusiasm. The
BoF (mainly David Fergusson, Kathryn Cassidy and
Prof Atkinson) thrashed out a proposed programme
of work on charter, which may prove to be a bit
ambitious. The contributions from Rüdiger Berlich
were significant.
Reagan Moore gave an interesting talk on his plans
for iRODs, but it connected very little with standards.
Instead, the talk explored a re-implemented SRB
with rules/computation that can be triggered by data
actions.
Microsoft demonstrated a multi-site conference
system. It looked easy to install and use but did not
interwork with Access Grid. Furthermore, it would
depend on the same difficult to tune Gentner echo
cancelling and poorly-supported multicast standards.
A report on the meeting could not be concluded
without a comment on the wonderful building in
which the event was held: a remarkable open inverted
hull shape on an enormous scale, with shelves of
rooms around the sides connected by inner airy
walkways and dramatic transverse level-changing
bridges. The GGF meeting only used a small fraction
of the space, which had its own metro station in the
basement.
3.3.4
GGF 18
This was the last GGF/OGF where Prof Atkinson had
to arrive on the Saturday for Sunday’s GFSG as he
had decided that as he is on the OGF Board, he could
not also be on the GFSG. Prof Atkinson reviewed the
experience of being on GFSG, as follows:
Initially, it was a very valuable activity but timeconsuming, involving the following:
•
Three one-day F2F meetings (held before each
GGF)
•
Attending all of each GGF, with side-bar
meetings, running approximately from 7.00am to
9.00pm each day
•
A two-day F2F in January
•
A half-day F2F at Super Computing
•
Weekly two-hour telcons
•
Reading reports
•
Communicating with group chairs
Page 64
Membership of the GFSG had a high value due to
participation in the following activities:
•
Providing interesting networking with field
leaders, as well as other Area Directors, the GGF
office team and the GGF leaders
•
Supporting decisions on managing groups
•
Imposing quality controls on the GGF
publications
•
Planning the GGF events
•
Addressing sustainability and publicity
The dominance of this merger and the business it
generated greatly reduced the time invested in
standards, even though the time, telcon calls and F2F
meetings were officially partitioned to preserve the
division of attention. Extra calls and F2Fmeetings
were undertaken to address pressing standards
issues, such as priorities, integration and gap
analysis, and document processing. After
discounting this, there were still two major
challenges, which remained insuperable.
1. Although labelled as a steering group, it was very
hard to steer.
a. The standards (and other groups) worked on
what they cared about (or their employers
wanted) and it was hard to get anything else
done. Group steering was mainly limited to
persuasion to achieve minor changes or
termination if the group became inactive.
Blocking publication of a report made a
group reconsider, but this tactic had to be
used sparingly.
b. Where requirements were recognised, it was
not always possible to persuade people to
start a group to address them.
c. After many years of trying to influence the
form of GGF/OGF events, it was clear that
they were not shaped by GFSG and controlled
by their programme committee. The
exigencies of satisfying sponsors, the
diverting pull of publicity, the varying ideas
about enterprise and e-Science, and the
president’s need to commit during crucial
meetings combined to overwhelm any
principled plan.
2. The continuing challenge of obtaining sufficient
income often led the organisation along
contingent paths or meant that the resources to
achieve the goals were not available. The office
staff, led by Steve Crumb, worked wonders but
they are not magicians.
Prof Atkinson recommended that UK e-Science had
one or two active members of GFSG – for example
Dave De Roure does a vital job at the interface with
W3C that is useful to UK e-Science – but suggested
that, in the future, the UK should have only a modest
presence in the GFSG. The UK had had a substantial
proportion of the Area Director chairs in the past.
Prof Atkinson was sorry to relinquish the role of Data
Area Director and noted that he would miss the
interactions with David Martin, the co-director of the
Data Area, and the work with the individual working
groups.
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.3 Prof Malcolm Atkinson – NeSC
The atmosphere at the event was frenetic because of
the juxtaposition of GridWorld. There was no
evidence of benefits to GGF and GridWorld being colocated, and the WG sessions were depleted of effort
compared with their normal attendance and energy.
The data area continued to push effectively on many
fronts, including the following:
•
DAIS, where there were documents in comment
and interoperability testing, a progressive handover of chairs (Dave Pearson and Norman Paton
did an excellent job).
The RDF story was developing with significant
input from Isao Kojima and the ONTOGRID
group in Spain.
•
The GFS-WG was progressing well, but there was
emerging contention over the issues of standards
for naming, as the OGSA-WG had a vision of a
generic naming standard and the GFS-WG was
trying to accommodate the existing behaviour of
file systems. This was eventually resolved.
•
The work on storage systems in the GSM-WG,
essentially a standard for SRM, was progressing
slowly on paper but well in practice with >5
implementation efforts under way.
It was unclear how this related to other storage
activities, such as SRM and SNIA standards, but
it related well to GridFTP.
•
GridFTP was productive; that is, it yielded a
standard which is in daily high-relevance
production use, including by the above SRM
stores.
This was a success for GGF, which was well
hidden because the Grid FTP community had not
written an experience report to transform the
‘standard’ from a ‘standard proposal’ to a
standard.
•
The above two communities combined in a group
to define a Data Movement Interface for
requesting a bulk movement of data, something
which is much needed. They were focusing on
file movement.
The OGSA-D-WG had also identified the need for
DMI.
•
There was not much sign of DFDL progress,
which is a great pity.
•
The Byte-IO-WG had demonstrable success and
was still moving forward quickly.
•
There was still no prospect of forming an
effective group to look at distributed data
replication, though this was clearly important
and there were several operational
implementations.
A welcome first at this GGF was the active
engagement of the Open Geospatial Consortium
(OGC) standards group. This is very significant for
the standards area as about 80% of data has some
geospatial element. The OGSA-DAI team, under the
aegis of OMII-UK, had a very successful tutorial
workshop and user group meeting.
The Education and Training Community Group (ETCG), under the e-Science OGF banner, received its
charter approval just in time for GGF18. The group
held its first two sessions, setting out its programme
of work and organising its several co-chairs. There
was strong input from Wolfgang Gentsch of D-Grid
and other colleagues from Karlsruhe, and significant
interest from the USA for the first session. The
second session was poorly attended, a common
feature of this GGF. Most of the detailed planning for
ET-CG had been done by David Fergusson and Prof
Atkinson, and they chaired the sessions. Their
thanks were given to Joel Replogle for setting up ETCG in about 24 hours, and to Kathryn Cassidy for a
burst of secretarial energy recording our meetings
and populating our ‘wiki’.
The formation and announcement of OGF was, by
this stage, a non-event for GFSG members as the
subject had been discussed ad nauseam for over a
year. The big question was whether it would bring in
industrial technical commitment to work on
standards and experience-led best practice. Paul
Strong was an immense asset, gained through the
merger. This was very evident at the Board, as well as
when he spoke in plenaries and session. Prof
Atkinson did not have significant other evidence of
gain in this area, but he had a limited view and there
was time for other positive gain to be shown. The
other big question was whether it will help
sustainability and income.
The software developer track proposal by Charlie
Catlett was a good one for gaining engagement and
community strength. The OGSA was progressing
well, particularly on the Basic Execution Service
(BES) front, and there was growing interest from
Microsoft in developing a BES HPC profile.
Overall, this event was a mixed performance, some
very good sessions but others where logistics and
rival activities limited expert engagement severely.
3.3.5
OGF19
Prof Atkinson found this to be an excellent OGF
because it was in a very good location in a spacious
building, which was in quiet surroundings, and was
somewhat off the beaten track. The facilities were
excellent and there was no distracting razzmatazz.
Much of Prof Atkinson’s time was spent talking in
side-bar discussions with people from the software
development community because this was the first
occasion on which there had been a software
development track, an idea that originated from
Charlie Catlett in the Board meeting, and turned out
to work well.
The other main activity in which Prof Atkinson was
extensively engaged was the whole series of meetings
on the Grid Education and Training activity. This
was very effective because a good group of people
attended the meetings, including people who came
especially for one day from places like Indiana. The
programme of developing the Education & Training
documents picked up momentum at least in the area
of t-Infrastructure, the sustained infrastructure to
support training or education, shared standards for
accreditation of training, and shared standards for
IPR. The challenge of developing a view on policy did
not develop quite as far as Prof Atkinson had hoped.
Once again, the DAIS-WG progressed well. The
standards were now well advanced and activity on the
RDF was beginning to develop.
Overall the OGF meeting was a great success, doing
the sorts of things that Prof Atkinson would like the
meeting to do.
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3 GridNet2 Reports
3.3 Prof Malcolm Atkinson – NeSC
3.3.6
OGF20
A great deal of work had been done by the UK
community to prepare this OGF which was held in
Manchester, UK. There was a large exhibition of
work put on by the e-Science community in the UK
and the same space was used by EGEE. This was a
very large conference because the EGEE meeting was
combined with the OGF meeting, and this was very
successful, with well over 900 people attending.
Much of the local effort had been led by Dave Berry
from NeSC and Stephen Pickles from NWeS. There
was also a strong programme of enterprise activities
developed by the GCN! consortium, Dave Berry and
Ian Osborne.
The programme contained many interesting talks and
Prof Atkinson particularly noted the value of the talk
by Paul Strong from eBay on the complex and
challenging problems of running a Grid which keeps
all of the data properly replicated, all of the software
properly deployed and upgraded on the system that
supports all of the eBay transactions, which is many
thousands of transactions per hour, and this has to be
sustained all of the time because many businesses
and individuals depend on it. It was a good example
of very challenging Grid technology. The problem
that Paul has is that very little of it is as yet built on
either standards or de facto industry standards.
The work of the ET-CG developed well. There was a
significant number of people at the meetings and the
group invested quite a lot of time on discussing and
developing plans for consistent training policy. They
also developed views on managing IPR for
educational training policies. This was very
important as they have to share material in such a
rapidly changing domain. New material is required
often but exercises with example data and example
software are very labour-intensive to build and so it
really is worth sharing such exercises between
institutions. However, the institutional ownership
issues have to be understood by the academics who
prepared the material. We talked at some length
about cooperation on the provision of
t-Infrastructure, support training or education, and
again, there are big advantages for sharing, not least
coping with the very peaky load of training sessions,
but policies are needed which allow that sharing to be
fair.
The group made progress with ideas regarding
professional Grid qualifications.
The work in the DAIS-WG also made progress, again
particularly in the RDF area. The work on OGSA
naming finally produced a result and it was nice to
see this. There was some resolution of the
relationships with Grid file systems as well and there
were good demonstrations of that work by the team
led by Andrew Grimshaw.
Overall there was good progress on reference models
and detailed definitions that support interoperability
and sharing and management of computational
systems but still there seemed to be too little work on
the management, sharing, distribution and
replication and so on of the large volumes of data, for
which Prof Atkinson thought Grids were very
significant, and there was virtually no work on how to
get connections to legacy data repositories. The one
community where there was some interesting
collaboration going on in this area was the Open
Geospatial Consortium interacting with OGF and that
was now a significant development. Again some of
this was led by people in Edinburgh, from EDINA.
Page 66
3.3.7
OGF21
This is an OGF which Prof Atkinson had to attend as
briefly as possible because of UK commitments and
the need to minimise jetlag as a result.
It was good to meet a number of former UK e-Science
community members and to note that they were
giving maximum benefit of their experience and the
UK investment in e-Science to a company which likes
to extract as much money from us as possible. Prof
Atkinson wondered what could be done to try and
encourage better use of the advanced knowledge and
skills within the UK.
Prof Atkinson’s primary reason for being at this OGF,
apart from attending formal meetings, board
meetings and so on, was to push forward the ET-CG
activities. The overall discussion of policy and Grid
education still tended to involve many issues on
terminology but, overall, there was consensus that
investment was necessary, that sharing was
necessary, that sharing ideas on curricula was
necessary, and there was a endorsement towards the
development of common practical material.
The framework for professional Grid certification
proved quite challenging. The proposers of the
current form of the document from Germany had a
very strong view that this should be modelled on the
sort of professional certification that is undertaken by
Cisco and Microsoft or the Linux community for
authorisation of people to work on their technology.
However, the Grid is much broader and wider than
that and so it is necessary to look for a more flexible
and more general process. Their view was that the
OGF could take on that role. That was not possible
because the OGF does not have the academic
credentials or the legal framework and certainly most
countries expect to have that kind of accreditation
achieved via the professional bodies or accreditation
bodies within their countries, endorsed by their
Education Ministry. So, finding an international
model was still something of a challenge.
The discussions on managing IPR for educational
repositories were not progressing as fast as Prof
Atkinson would have liked, mainly because no one
from the USA (a major potential contributor), or
from Asia, was coming forward and being prepared to
put forward their views on how they would manage
IPR. The proposal to build on the Creative Commons
was a good one but the difficulty is that IPR
legislation and standard practices differ greatly in
different countries and, in many cases, the academics
who are creating the IPR are not fully aware of their
employer’s attitude to sharing it in a common
repository, that is, they are apt to sign (tick) releases
when they do not have the authority to do so – a
notion of informed consent is needed.
Implementation of policies for cooperating on
t-Infrastructure was another topic which was
progressing well but maybe not as fast as Prof
Atkinson would like. The difficulty here was not so
much interoperation as cohabitation. The problem
was to get the various models of Grid software and
the example applications that are used for education
to be able to run in the same context so that lecturers
and other educators do not have to build or access
multiple contexts in order to demonstrate the
multiple concepts in this domain. The work was
continuing with most of the effort of writing being
undertaken by the team from Catania.
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.4 Prof Mark Baker – Reading
The conference showed two very strong successes on
interoperation which Prof Atkinson thought was a
sign of the improvement and maturing of OGF. The
OGSA ByteIO interoperability first demonstrated two
independent implementations of ByteIO based on the
proposed standard and this, of course, was the
requirement to take a proposed standard
recommendation to a full standard. That work was
led by people at EPCC in Edinburgh and it was very
good to see it coming to a success.
3.5
The other interoperability success which was quite
spectacular was the work on the HPCP. That had
been developed in a very short time and had built on
the JSDL standard which was developed and
proposed by the UK and led by people from Imperial
College London. It was good to see this progress.
3.5.1
Overall, it was a successful if somewhat brief, for Prof
Atkinson, meeting in Seattle.
3.4
Prof Mark Baker –
Reading
Prof Mark Baker is Research Professor of Computer
Science in the School of Systems Engineering at the
University of Reading.
For a summary of Prof Baker’s GridNet2 activities,
see section 2.4, Prof Mark Baker – Reading.
3.4.1
ICEAGE - Curricula
Development Workshop
The GridNet2 award funded Prof Baker’s attendance
at the ICEAGE Project Curricula Development
Workshop for e-Science Education that was held in
Brussels on the 14- 15 February 2008.
The ICEAGE Project Curricula Development
Workshop for e-Science Education had the goal of
gathering together educators interested in discussing
and laying out a syllabus that could be used to
educate and train both undergraduate and Masters
students that wish to pursue courses related to
e-Science.
The workshop was attended by a fairly diverse group
of people ranging from those involved in computer
science education to individuals working in particular
e-Science fields, as well as those interested in general
education. On the first day of the workshop, the
group discussed and debated the prerequisites and
educational goals for an undergraduate level
e-Science course that was made up of three stages,
including e-Working, as well as basic and advanced
research methods. On the second day, the
prerequisites and educational goals for a Masters
course in e-Science were outlined and discussed.
Overall, the discussion and debate that took place
over the duration of the workshop provided a
valuable contribution to the progress of defining a
curriculum for undergraduates, as well as for
postgraduates. In addition, the workshop allowed the
people attending to the workshop to meet, socialise,
and exchange views on e-Science in general.
Funding from GridNet2 was essential to enable Prof
Baker to attend and contribute to the Project
Curricula Development Workshop for e-Science
Education. The outcomes of this work will be of great
use to the e-Science community, and will underpin
future educational developments for e-Science and
e-Research.
Dr Dave Berry –
NeSC
Dr Dave Berry is Deputy Director of the e-Science
Institute at the National e-Science Centre, University
of Edinburgh.
For a summary of Dr Berry’s GridNet2 activities, see
section 2.5, Dr Dave Berry – NeSC.
OGSA F2F – Jan 06
Dr Berry attended this meeting of the OGSA-WG in
his role as co-chair of the OGSA-D-WG and as a
member of the OGSA-WG. One session of the
meeting was devoted to the OGSA Data Architecture,
discussing in detail how it fitted with the main OGSA
architecture and with other OGSA activities such as
ByteIO (which was work spawned by the OGSA-DWG and which eventually published a specification in
Jan 2007), WS-Naming, RNS (to which the group
recommended several changes to make it better fit
with OGSA) and EMS.
The OGSA-WG also worked on version 1.5 of the
OGSA Document. This document, of which Dr Berrry
was a co-author, was finally published in September
2006.
3.5.2
GGF16
Dr Berry attended GGF16 in his role as co-chair of the
OGSA-D-WG. The OGSA-D-WG held two sessions
on the current state of their two documents. These
were useful in getting feedback from the community
about the current state of these documents. Dr Berry
and the OGSA-D-WG also spent time outside
sessions incorporating this feedback into the
document.
The group’s work on the OGSA Data Architecture led
to the organisation of a BoF on Data Movement
Interfaces (DMI). This was held at GGF16 and led to
the creation of a working group to develop a standard
for a DMI interface. This is supported by several
leading e-Science Grids, including CERN/EGEE.
The joint session with SNIA covered some
possibilities for co-operation. There is clearly some
overlap of interest as management of storage
underpins data Grids.
Dr Berry attended the following sessions:
•
Overview of the OGSA Data Architecture
(OGSA-D-WG) (co-chair)
•
OGSA-D Working Session (OGSA-D-WG) (cochair)
•
GIN
•
GFS-WG
•
Grid Architecture Experts Workshop
•
Data Movement Interface Standardisation
(DMIS BoF)
•
SNIA Joint Session
•
DAIS Working Group Session (DAIS-WG)
•
Data Area Meeting
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3.6 Prof David Chadwick – Kent
3.5.3
GGF18
Dr Berry attended GGF18 in his role as co-chair of
the OGSA-D-WG. The OGSA-D-WG held two
sessions to review the current state of their two
documents. These were useful in getting feedback
from the community about the current state of these
documents. The group also spent time outside
sessions incorporating this feedback into the
document.
In addition, Dr Berry attended a range of other
sessions in order to keep himself up to date with
developments in technology and GGF standards. Of
particular interest was the session on integrating
OGSA and the EGA reference model, which was
aimed at ensuring that models of Grid from
enterprise and e-Science would work together, and
identity management, which reviewed the state of the
art in Grid security.
Dr Berry also attended a number of enterpriseoriented workshops, partly in his capacity as
Technology Lead of the Grid Computing Now!
Knowledge Transfer Network. These workshops
enabled him to keep in touch with the growing uptake
of Grid in industry and, of more importance, to track
what they see as the most important outstanding
issues facing the uptake of Grid technologies.
The keynote presentation by Paul Strong of Ebay was
particularly interesting, exploring the issues of
managing enterprise infrastructures on a huge scale.
Sessions attended:
Architecture document. They resolved many
outstanding issues, clarified others, and revised the
overall structure to improve the readability of this
document.
They also worked on the companion document on
Scenarios for the Data Architecture. In particular,
they led a joint session with people working on OGSA
EMS scenarios. This led to revisions on both sides to
ensure that the two strands of work would work
together.
In addition, they reached out to other working groups
in the data area, to co-ordinate their work and that of
the OGSA Data Architecture.
Sessions attended:
•
OGSA Data Document Review (OGSA-D-WG)
(co-chair)
•
EMS/Data Scenarios (OGSA-D-WG) (co-chair)
•
OGSA Workflow (OGSA-WG)
•
OGSA ByteIO WG Session (BYTEIO-WG)
•
Standards All Hands: Integrating the Work of
OGF (2 sessions)
•
Needs and Requirements for Quality of Service
in the Grid (BoF) (Quality of Service BoF)
•
The Storage Resource Management Standard
Proposal - the Core Version (GSM-WG)
The OGSA Data Architecture document was finally
published in December 2007, with Dr Berry as one of
the co-authors.
•
Grid Computing Now! The UK Experience in the
adoption of Grid Computing Technologies (cochair)
•
OGSA Data Architecture Services (OGSA-D-WG)
(co-chair)
•
The OGSA Data Architecture Scenarios (OGSAD-WG) (co-chair)
•
Enterprise Grid Requirements
•
Mini Symposium - Development Tools for GT4
Service Programming
•
OGSA and EGA Reference Model (OGSA-WG)
3.6.1
•
Pharmaceutical Grid Requirements
OGSA-Authz-WG Meeting
•
Enterprise & Standards Summit:
Session 1 - Requirements Rollup, and
Session 2 - Requirements Prioritization
This was the first meeting that Prof Chadwick took
over as a joint chair with Von Welch.
•
Topics in Identity Management
3.5.4
OGSA WG Telcons – Aug
06
Dr Berry contributed to the OGSA working group,
primarily to co-ordinate work on the OGSA Data
Architecture with the overall developments of OGSA.
This also allowed him to keep in touch with
developments in OGSA.
3.5.5
OGF19
This was a very productive meeting for Dr Berry. In
addition to the formal sessions, Dr Berry spent a
great deal of time working with his co-chair Allen
Luniewski on the draft of the OGSA Data
Page 68
3.6
Prof David Chadwick
– Kent
Prof Chadwick is Professor of Information Systems
Science at the University of Kent.
For a summary of Prof Chadwick’s GridNet2
activities, see section 2.6, Prof David Chadwick –
Kent.
GGF14
The status of the current deliverables was briefly
discussed – the Attribute document was in hands of
GGF Editor, and the SAML profile document would
be at end of WG last call at end of this week.
Attention was now focusing on the next set of
deliverables. Prof Chadwick gave a presentation
about authorisation architectures in a multi-domain
environment (the slide show is on Gridforge site at
https://forge.gridforum.org/sf/go/doc13703?nav=1).
Prof Chadwick’s presentation considered which
components are needed and how the target Source of
Authority can remain in control of the policy for
access to its resources. The concept of a Credential
Validation Service was introduced to the group.
Frank Siebenlist gave a similar presentation but from
a different viewpoint. This considered asking remote
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.6 Prof David Chadwick – Kent
domains (AAs) if they could help in the credential
validation.
Dane raised the issue that if one network round-trip
to each security service is required, then this would
cause a major performance problem.
There was quite a bit of discussion about the correct
way forward. No agreement was reached, but it was
recognised that the problem space needed to be
constrained for the next set of standards, since it
would not be possible to standardise everything in
the next round.
The meeting then discussed the Charter Revision to
cover the next round of standardisation effort. The
first two paragraphs of the existing charter were all
right for the revised WG but the third paragraph
onwards needed revising since it talkedabout a twophased approach. It was recognised that more than a
two-phased approach was needed, since OGSAAuthz-WG was already in phase 2. It was agreed that
this WG would be an authorisation architecture
group for OGSA even though its output would be
aimed at a wider audience than simply OGSA. It was
also agreed to retain the OGSA-Authz name for the
group.
The tentative set of output documents were agreed
upon, as follows:
1. A scenario document which can be part of the
architecture document
2. Version 2 of the PEP-PDP protocol document
3. Version 1 of the PEP-CVS protocol
Implications for UK e-Science
It was still very early days for standardising a
replacement protocol for the OGSA Authz SAML
profile. The latter was known to be deficient (not
least from experiments carried out by Richard
Sinnott at Glasgow) but there was no consensus yet
as to what the replacement should be.
3.6.2
GGF15
OGSA-Authz-WG Meeting
Prior to the meeting, Von Welch had prepared and
circulated an outline scheme for combing Shibboleth,
GT4, VOMS, and PERMIS. This showed the
interconnection points and the standard interfaces
that would be needed. Prof Chadwick had hoped that
this would be a major focus of the meeting, but this
did not turn out to be the case. Instead, a lot of time
was spent on discussing the development of XACML
v3 by OASIS, which is expected to be completed by
the end of the year, and how this might be a solution
to many of the authorisation problems. This tended
to divert attention away from spending time working
on the next generation of authorisation protocols,
which had been agreed at the last meeting, and
instead treading water waiting for XACMLv3.
Consequently, Prof Chadwick found this meeting to
be somewhat disappointing, and not to move things
forward in any way. The previous meeting had
recognised the need to progress from the current
SAML Authz protocol to something with more
functionality. Prof Chadwick had expected this
meeting would make significant progress towards the
next generation protocol(s). However, this was not
the case and, in Prof Chadwick’s opinion, no further
progress was made during this meeting.
Implications for UK e-Science
It was possible that XACMLv3 would provide the
extra needed functionality, for example, in the area of
delegation of authority, but this would not be clear
until it is delivered. In Prof Chadwick’s opinion, this
should not be a reason to postpone developments
altogether. As Bob Cowles pointed out at the meeting,
there was considerable value in an iterative approach
to standards and releases, rather than a "shoot-forperfect" approach. Thus UK e-Science should migrate
from where it currently was to something that is
better, based on what existed at the time, rather than
waiting for the next version of XACML, since there is
no certainty what this would contain or when it
would be delivered.
Leveraging Site Infrastructures for
Multi-Site Grids Workshop
This was a very varied workshop with nine
presentations showing the wide span of activity in
this area. There were talks about Shibboleth, GridShib, Condor-Shibboleth, Pub cookie-MyProxy,
Signet-Grouper. Prof Chadwick gave a presentation
about dynamic delegation of authority between sites,
which was being piloted between Glasgow and
Edinburgh as part of the JISC DyVOSE project.
Whilst the workshop itself was a good way of
disseminating information, and learning about these
different projects, it also highlighted the complexity
and diversity that still exists in the security world,
and that fact that there were still many different ways
of achieving the same functional requirements of
authentication and authorisation.
Implications for UK e-Science
Whilst UK e-Science was still in the phase of “let a
thousand flowers bloom”, there would eventually
need to be some shake up, and decisions to back
some horses instead of others, otherwise
interworking between sites would be very difficult.
Shibboleth appeared to be a winner, and integrating
Shibboleth with Globus Toolkit and OMII should be a
major focus for e-Science.
3.6.3
GGF16
As usual, a major benefit from attending GGF
meetings was the unprecedented ability to network
with a large group of researchers who were closely
involved with similar research issues. This meeting
was no exception, and Prof Chadwick managed to
talk to many people about forming a Network of
Excellence in Grid security. Should such a NoE be
formed, this would, of course, have major benefits to
UK e-Science.
OGSA-Authz-WG Meeting
Prof Chadwick co-chaired the OGSA-Authz-WG
meeting with Von Welch. The meeting initially
discussed the revised charter that Prof Chadwick had
circulated prior to the meeting. A number of
additional issues and deliverables were added to the
revised charter, and Prof Chadwick later distributed
an updated version to the list. Prof Chadwick then
presented his vision for how authorisation in VOs
should evolve from their current status, with the
additional of an attribute credential validation service
(CVS). The functionality of this module was to ensure
that the attribute credentials were valid prior to
making an authorisation decision, and extract the
valid attributes. Invalid credentials would be
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3.6 Prof David Chadwick – Kent
discarded. There was wide agreement in the group
that this functionality was needed, and that current
PDPs, such as XACML, expected to receive already
validated attributes. Standardisation of a protocol for
communication between the PEP and the CVS was a
proposed deliverable in the revised charter.
Nate Klingenstein from Internet 2 gave a short talk at
the end of the meeting about the problems of
authorisation using the attributes from multiple
attribute authorities (AAs). The problem arises
because the user was typically known with different
identities in each AA. He suggested two models. The
model that was easiest to implement was where
attribute credentials issued by multiple remote
Attribute Authorities (AAs) were validated by the
Identity Provider’s local AA, their signatures were
stripped off, and the attributes combined with the
local ones and transferred to the Service Provider
(SP) as one combined attribute credential. The SP
then only needed to validate one credential. However,
this model was weak from a trust perspective, since
the local AA was asserting that a user has attributes
which it is not an authoritative source for. The more
difficult model to implement was one in which the SP
actually retrieved the attribute credentials from
multiple AAs. How did the SP know the different
identities of the user that were used by each AA?
After the meeting, Prof Chadwick thought about this
problem and, on the following day, wrote an outline
solution to the problem. He expected this outline to
be submitted to the Internet2 consortium for review,
and then finalised for presentation at a conference
later in 2006.
Shibboleth Globus Toolkit BoF
This BoF was chaired by Von Welch, and was split
over two days. The first day comprised 7
presentations from researchers who are working on
different aspects of merging these two technologies
together. Prof Chadwick gave a short talk about his
GridShibPERMIS and GT-PERMIS projects.
Participants from the University of Manchester gave
a short talk about the SHEBANGS project.
The second day comprised a discussion of the various
issues and drawing up a list of actions that should be
undertaken.
This work was of importance to the UK, since JISC is
supporting the rollout of Shibboleth to university
computing services, whilst the NGS is based on
Globus Toolkit. Clearly the merging of Shibboleth
and GT technologies would be beneficial to UK
e-Science.
3.6.4
GGF17
OGSA-Authz-WG
Prof Chadwick chaired the WG meeting alone as
unfortunately Von Welch could not make this
meeting. Significant progress had been made since
the last GGF meeting.
The Charter had been revised and two IDs had been
published: the PDP and CVS protocol specifications,
both written by Prof Chadwick and his team at Kent.
All three documents were discussed in two long
telephone conferences in the weeks prior to the
meeting.
The first phone conference suggested that the charter
should be slimmed down dramatically and should
only fit the work which the OGSA-Authz-WG could
do, that is, produce documents that for which the
group had editors. This proposal was confirmed at
the meeting, and so Prof Chadwick agreed to produce
a revised charter.
The second phone conference concentrated on the
CVS protocol specification and the use of XACMLv3.
Frank Siebenlist proposed that XACMLv3 could be
used for both the PDP and the CVS protocols. Prof
Chadwick agreed that it could be used for the first,
providing a stable version is published by OASIS, but
doubted if it could be used for the second. This was
discussed further at the meeting and it was agreed
that Prof Chadwick should draft a list of
requirements for a CVS. Two members of the OGSAAuthz-WG volunteered to analyse the requirements
to see if XACMLv3 was able to satisfy them.
The relevance of this work to UK e-Science was that if
no agreements could be reached on architectures and
protocols for authorisation infrastructures, then the
provision of authorisation components would remain
fractured and disjointed. UK e-scientists would either
have to make do with what was already provided, or
patch in their own additional essential bits and pieces
to give them the added functionality they required,
without enjoying the benefits of plug and play, and
the ability to select best of breed that standardised
interfaces would provide. This sticking plaster
approach applied in many application scenarios, with
many components, such as LCAS, gridmap-files, EDG
Java Security, GridSite, G-PBox, PERMIS, XACML
and GACL, all being used in an ad-hoc and
uncoordinated way. The duplication and wasted
effort that this caused was enormous, with seemingly
every application developer inventing their own
approach to authorisation provision.
Various presentations were given, the most
noteworthy being from Blair Dillaway of Microsoft
who gave his vision of future Grid security, and the
numerous issues that need to be addressed this state
of Grid security is achieved.
One of the disappointing features of the current GGF
OGSA-Authz-WG meetings was that some
authorisation infrastructure developers, such as the
VOMS team, did not actively participate in the
meetings. Prof Chadwick wonders if they would
actually adopt the protocol specifications that would
eventually be produced by this WG. This had to be a
cause for concern for UK e-Science.
GGF Chairs Update
Astro-RG Work Shop
This meeting updated the chairs of the GGF groups
about the new facilities that would soon become
available on GridForge. There was also an update on
other issues of importance to the GGF, such as the
upcoming merger with EGA.
The subtitle of this day long workshop was Building a
Global Virtual Observatory for Astronomy - Grid
Standards and their Relevance in Use. Chadwick was
invited to speak about the work of the OGSA-AuthzWG.
Security Area Group Meeting
Prof Chadwick found the group to be very receptive to
the work within OGSA-Authz and desirous of a
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3.6 Prof David Chadwick – Kent
standard interface for plugging in different
policy-based authorisation infrastructures. The
Astro-RG was already tackling problems in this area.
After Prof Chadwick had finished his presentation,
the group said that they would feed back their
requirements into the OGSA-Authz-WG, which
would be very beneficial to it.
3.6.5
GGF18
Shibboleth for Grids
This comprised four sessions, two on both Monday
and Tuesday, which were devoted to updates about
various projects around the globe that are integrating
Shibboleth with Grid technologies. There were
presentations from the following people:
but not the same as XACML). The language provides
safety properties via simple syntactic checks. MS
wanted to define complete policies that specify trust,
delegation and authorisation. They use standard
XML parsers and XML DigSigs to protect their
policies. Principals are identified by their public keys
rather than their names. Resource hierarchies are
supported. Attributes are name value pairs (this is
pretty standard now). They use regular expressions
for matching variables. All-in-all the system has some
good features and MS has tried to pick what they see
as the best features that existing authorisation
PDPs/policies provide.
Jef Tan from Monash University talked about
connecting across firewalls for the Grid. He used a
combination of SOCKS and SSH to get past university
firewalls.
•
Erik Vullings, via Skype from Australia, who
talked about the MAMS system and tools such as
Autograph that control attribute release policies
•
Christoph Witzig, of SWITCH, who is working
within EGEE to add Shibboleth authentication as
an alternative to X.509 PKI authentication
•
Von Welch, who gave an update about the
GridShib project
•
David Spence, from CCLRC, who gave an update
about the ShibGrid project
•
Mike Jones, whose talk about the SHEBANGS
project raised more unresolved issues than
answers, and who also gave a summary about
GridSite and Shibboleth
•
Richard Sinnott, who spoke about the various
projects at NeSC Glasgow
The minutes of the OGSA-Authz-WG meeting are
available at:
https://forge.gridforum.org/sf/go/doc13860?nav=1.
•
Prof Chadwick, who described the latest user
friendly tools for setting PERMIS policies for
Shibboleth and Grid resources;
3.6.6
•
Nate Klingenstein, who gave a comprehensive
talk about SAMLv2 and Shibbolethv2
•
SAGA security discussions
•
Alan Sill, who spoke about combining VOMS and
the registration service VOMRS with Shibboleth
•
Security Area meeting
•
•
Federated Identity workshop
Tom Scavo, who talked about X.509 and SAML
bindings
•
LOA BoF
•
CAOPS-WG
•
OGSA Authn Charter
Clearly there was a lot of activity in this area and
there were many similarities in the approaches,
which involved having an online pseudo-CA that
issued short-lived certificates for use on the Grid,
based on Shibboleth authentication of the user. It
would be good if one common model for this could be
standardised.
Globus Security for the Real World
This session described not only the current security
mechanisms in GT4, but also the future mechanisms
that Globus was currently working on, such as
improved authorisation.
Security Talks
Blair Dillaway from Microsoft gave a talk on access
control research that MS has been doing. SecPAL is a
declarative, logic-based, security policy language. It
supports the distributed creation of policies.
Permissions are monotonic so the results are always
predictable (this was the same as the PERMIS model,
OGSA-Authz-WG meeting
The meeting was very productive, and had been
preceded by a teleconference for those WG members
who could not attend GGF18 in Washington. The
revised charter for the WG was finally agreed, with
only minor amendments being suggested to the
version that had been posted two months prior to the
meeting. The CVS Requirements document had some
more features recommended for inclusion in the next
version. The Authorisation Functional Components
document also had some useful enhancements
suggested for inclusion. VOMS and PERMIS profiles
had been posted to the WG mailing lists and some
enhancements were suggested to the VOMS profile.
At the end of the meeting, the dates and times for the
next teleconferences were set.
OGF19
Prof Chadwick attended the following sessions:
Prof Chadwick also chaired the OGSA-Authz-WG
meeting.
SAGA Security meeting
On Monday morning, the SAGA group had a joint
meeting with security experts to gain feedback on
their current API. This was a useful meeting as it
allowed the security experts who were present to help
to improve the SAGA API definitions, by making the
security calls more generic and high level, rather than
technology dependent. For example, instead of
making a call to add a user to an access control list,
this was changed to assign a particular access
permission to a user. This would allow more
flexibility in the security infrastructure and different
technologies to be used as they become available,
without affecting the Grid applications (API callers).
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3.6 Prof David Chadwick – Kent
A new version of the API was to be produced,
incorporating the proposed changes.
OGSA-Authz-WG Meeting
Prof Chadwick chaired this meeting, during which
good progress was made. An editor was found for the
remaining deliverable, dates were arranged for
teleconferences up to the next OGF meeting
(OGF20), and there was a presentation by Takuya
Mori of NTT about the first use of the OGF XACMLSAML draft profile that was written by Prof
Chadwick. The OGF profile is based on the OASIS
XACML-SAML profile. It was stated during the
meeting that since the OASIS profile had been
written, OASIS had deprecated its use, believing
(wrongly) that no-one was using it 2. Takuya and Prof
Chadwick therefore agreed to update the OGF profile
in the light of the practical experience and OASIS’s
decision. The meeting ended with Von Welch
standing down as joint chair, being thanked for his
outstanding contribution over the years, and a call
being made for a replacement.
OGSA Security Area Meeting
The OGSA Security Area session was designed to
bring everyone working on security within OGSA
together, to synchronise their charters and goals. As
an example, the High Performance Computing group
has published its profile and has requested input to
its security section, but few people have reviewed this
document to date. The meeting wanted to ensure that
common texts on security related topics could be
produced for use in other OGSA documents. Then
when a document was said to be OGSA compliant, it
would be clear what it means from a security
perspective.
Federated Identity
All Tuesday was taken up with four sessions on
Federated Identity. There were many presentations
which reviewed the entire landscape in this area,
starting off with an overview by Ken Klingenstein.
The sessions covered authorisation and privilege
assignment as well as federated identity. The use of
Shibboleth was continuing to expand, and several
projects were linking Shibboleth to Grids, for
example, EGEE (SWITCH) and SHEBANGS
(Manchester University). Signet and Grouper were
continuing to be developed as a means of assigning
privileges to users, but Signet was not a role-based
system. Rather, it assigned permission to users to
access particular resources, along with conditions of
access. Signet was not plugged into any Grid or
application or PDP system. This currently had to be
done by users of the technology. A set of standard
connectors was required if Signet/Grouper were to be
used to maximum advantage. These four sessions
proved to be a good overview for anyone new to the
area, who wanted to gain a wider appreciation of the
work that was currently being undertaken.
LOA BoF
The primary security meeting on Wednesday was the
LoA BoF, chaired by Ning Zhang of Manchester. She
started the meeting by presenting an overview of
LoAs and highlighting the work done by the White
House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB)
and NIST. It was noted that there are three separate
aspects to LoAs, as follows:
1. The raw data/attributes which describe the
authentication process carried out by the IdP
2. The algorithmic process for computing a LoA
from this raw data
3. A trust mechanism to assure that the LoA (or raw
data) provided by an IdP is correct
It was generally agreed that the four levels specified
by NIST were good ones. It was also agreed that the
whole LoA process was very similar to the
certification and assurance process of Grid CAs.
Whereas the IGTF validates that every Grid CA is
operating to a specific level of trustworthiness, and
thus has a binary level of authentication (pass or fail),
the NIST LoA specifies four levels. The majority of
the meeting agreed that the current IGTF method is
insufficient and that both higher and lower levels are
needed to cater for existing Grid users. It would,
therefore, be possible, when evaluating new CAs, for
the IGTF to assign them a NIST LoA at the same
time. (This roughly corresponds to point 3 above.)
It was pointed out that there was a difference
between the trust you could have in an identity, and
the trust in authentication of that identity. The
meeting noted that there were currently holes in the
NIST LoA specification, for example, it does not cater
for how the LoA is transported from the IdP to a
remote SP. The meeting agreed to request a research
group be formed to investigate the holes in the
current LoA specifications, how Grids might use the
LoA, and what criteria would be used to assess the
LoA of an IdP. Ning Zhang agreed to chair this RG.
Mike Helm agreed to gather use cases for LoAs. The
BoF also agreed to add a work item to the proposed
OGSA-Authn-WG to cover the transporting of LoAs
in protocol. The definition of the various LoA levels
would be done by the IGTF.
CAOPS-WG
The CA-OPS meeting took place on Thursday. The
international group of CAs was continuing to expand,
with two South American countries in the process of
being added. There was still an issue over how the CA
operators can securely communicate with each other,
for example, if one of the CAs was compromised.
Terena had started to create a PGP circle of trust, but
dissenters preferred an S/MIME circle to be created.
There were pros and cons for both mechanisms, and
this issue was likely to drag on for some time.
Rachana gave a talk about validating proxy
certificates and attribute assertions, and said that the
Globus team was defining an Assertion Validation
Service, which, in fact, was no different to the
Credential Validation Service which had been
specified by Prof Chadwick in an OGSA-Authz-WG
draft a year earlier. There was a presentation from
the UK NGS about auditing RAs and its value. Some
participants were sceptical about the cost-value
proposition for this audit.
OGSA-Authn Charter BoF
2
A subsequent email to the Authz group from Anne
Anderson of Sun, editor of the OASIS XACML-SAML
profile, said that this profile had not been deprecated.
So there were no restrictions on the OGF WG
producing a Grid profile based on it.
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This BoF happened on Thursday afternoon. It was
agreed to develop basic use cases in the short term to
refine the use of authentication tokens (including
un/pw) over secure channels in the OGSA context.
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3.6 Prof David Chadwick – Kent
Richer use cases would be developed in the long
term. There was a long discussion of about whether
delegation should be within the scope of the group or
not. The decision was to include impersonation and
the protocols for transferring tokens within the
Authn group and leave delegation of authority to the
Authz group. The BOF succeeded in getting editors
for four of its proposed deliverables. The more
complex or long term deliverables were still awaiting
editors.
3.6.7
OGF20
OGSA-Authz-WG
This group met on the morning of the first day, and
was chaired by Prof Chadwick. The meeting was very
productive, as the minutes of the meeting show. The
minutes are available at:
http://forge.gridforum.org/sf/go/doc14495?nav=1
There were some good presentations by three groups
of researchers. However, the WG needed to address
the serious issue of how to get people to contribute
and progress the WG documents forward between
meetings. At that time, there was very little
documentation activity between meetings, and it
appeared, very few implementations of the existing
protocol specifications. Unless this situation was to
change significantly by the end of the year, Prof
Chadwick suggested that serious consideration be
given to closing or suspending the OGSA-Authz-WG.
LOA-RG
This group met after morning coffee on the first day.
This group was tasked with producing use cases and
risk analysis for the use of Levels of Authentication
Assurance (LoA), and a gap analysis of the current
LoA standards. The meeting reviewed a series of use
case scenarios and the audience contributed towards
a better understanding of them. LoA was an
important security concept, and the more
understanding and use that implementers made of it,
the more secure Grids would become.
CAOPS-WG
The CAOPS-WG met on Tuesday early evening. One
problem the CAOPS-WG was facing was that the
commercial CAs were not doing their job properly,
and would either authenticate anyone with any name,
or not authenticate a person with a name they already
possess. Given that the only role a CA had was to bind
a name to a public key, this was a major failing of
most commercial CAs (caused, incidentally, by their
eagerness to shed as much legal liability as possible
for their actions). Consequently, the CA-OPS-WG had
to devise mechanisms whereby relying parties could
control which namespaces they would accept from
which CAs, so as to ensure that Grid users were only
given their “correct” DNs. Prof Chadwick wondered if
there were any value at all in having a certificate from
a commercial CA, unless it was badged for your own
organisation. Your own local CA could be just as
reliable and trustworthy at binding names to public
keys.
Astronomical Virtual Observatory
On Wednesday, there was a full day workshop of
Astro Grid. Prof Chadwick met with the organisers
prior to the meeting in order to better understand
their security requirements, and he then gave a
presentation about how existing Grid security
software could be tailored to meet the challenges that
these raised. In particular, the virtual observatory
had a dynamically changing set of member
organisations and dynamically changing
memberships within those organisations. However,
the VO service providers did not want to be
continually changing their access control policies,
meaning that role-based access controls were needed,
with a fixed set of trusted role administrators. It also
meant that dynamic delegation of administrative
authority to a larger more frequently changing pool of
administrators from the VO partner organisations
was also needed. The dynamic administrators could
then assign VO membership roles to the individuals
within their organisations, without any need to
change the service providers’ policies. Prof Chadwick
highlighted how VOMS and PERMIS could be
integrated together to provide one solution that
would meet these needs.
OGSA Express Authentication
Security Profile
Wednesday afternoon saw a meeting of the express
authentication security profile from the OGSA WG.
In Prof Chadwick’s opinion, whilst this work was
valuable, it did not go far enough. It would only allow
a Grid service provider (SP) to know who you were,
without knowing what you were entitled to do. The
profile was only half a fix for the real problem.
However, it should not be too difficult to extend the
current work to provide a fuller more complete
solution by borrowing some of the ideas used by
Microsoft Cardspace and Trust Negotiation, in which
SP’s would publish the authorisation tokens that they
required, and IdPs would publish the authorisation
tokens they could issue. In this way, users should be
able to easily marry the two together in order to
ensure that they could get access to the resources
they are entitled to.
GridNet2 Meeting
On Thursday morning, Prof Chadwick took a break
from the OGF20 meetings to attend the GridNet2
Advisory Board meeting at the University of
Manchester.
3.6.8
OGF21
Prof Chadwick attended a number of working group
meetings as described below. Another important
benefit of attending this particular OGF meeting was
to have F2F discussions with Valerio Venturi of
INFN, Italy, who was the main developer of the
current VOMS software. Prof Chadwick has two UK
JISC-funded projects, VPMan and Shintau, which
will require PERMIS to interwork with the VOMS
SAML attribute issuing service that is currently being
developed by INFN. At the F2F meeting, Prof
Chadwick and Venturi discussed in detail how the
protocol should be finalised so as to ensure seamless
interworking between the two systems. This F2F
meeting would lead to new input into the draft
OGSA-Authz specification that Valerio has recently
written.
OGSA-Authz WG Meeting
Prof Chadwick chaired this meeting which was well
attended. Prior to the meeting, the ADs had discussed
with Prof Chadwick the possibility of closing the
OGSA-Authz- WG down in the near future, due to the
lack of participation by the OGSA-Authz-WG
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3.6 Prof David Chadwick – Kent
members. As it turned out, this was one of the most
productive WG meetings that the group had during
the last 18 months. There was plenty of support from
the attendees in keeping the OGSA-Authz-WG going,
especially from OMII-Europe. There are several
reasons for the lack of support during the last year or
two, such as the working group being ahead of user
requirements and demand, or researchers not having
any funding to work in this area. This was perhaps
changing now that Grid usage was increasing, and the
scalability limits of existing systems, such as Grid
mapfiles, was becoming increasingly apparent.
Prof Chadwick presented the latest developments in
the two existing authorisation protocol profile
specifications (client-PDP and client-CVS), and
Valerio presented the first draft of the third and final
protocol profile specification (client-CIS (Credential
Issuing Service)) that was needed to allow a full set of
interactions between the PDP, PEP, CVS and CIS of
an authorisation infrastructure. This third profile
specified how to use SAML for retrieving the
credentials (signed attribute assertions) of a Grid
user from a CIS (or Attribute Authority).
Valerio also presented the latest developments with
their prototype implementation of a CIS, with which
researchers at Kent had already been experimenting
in order to integrate VOMS with their PERMIS
authorisation system.
Prof Chadwick presented the latest developments in
the VPMan and Shintau projects, and gave an
overview of the conceptual model for aggregating
attributes from multiple IdPs.
The meeting concluded by agreeing that the
publication of the three protocol profiles should be
treated as a matter of urgency so that they can be
reviewed and published for use by the wider
community.
Security Area Meeting
Mike Jones, director of Identity Partnerships at
Microsoft, spoke about CardSpace and its likely
evolution. He also provided a demonstration of the
current system. CardSpace is bundled with MS Vista
and a plug-in for MS XP can also be obtained. MS
had agreed to cooperate with OpenID to ensure
interworking between the two systems in a future
release. This might eventually have a significant
impact on Grid systems, but in the medium term, it
was more likely to affect campus networks and
Shibboleth systems.
The meeting concluded with a quick overview of the
security work that would be covered during the
remainder of the OGF21 meeting.
CAOPS-WG Session
The meeting discussed the Grid Certificate Profile
which had just finished its public comment period. A
new version of the document was expected to be
available by Nov 6, and that version would address all
the comments received. The meeting also discussed
the Audit document which described a general
framework for auditing CAs to ensure that they
behave as expected.
The group then spent some time discussing the name
constraints that Relying Parties might wish to place
on certificate path processing procedures. The
proposal had wildcards in the specification which was
a way of specifying DIT subtrees. Prof Chadwick
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pointed out that the X.509 and X.501 specifications
already had ways of defining general subtrees which
did not include wildcards, and he forwarded the
relevant text to the list.
The final topic on the agenda was the use of OCSP
servers. It seemed that the requirement for OCSP was
dwindling as most RPs seemed to be happy with
CRLs or short-lived certificates. Prof Chadwick
mentioned the recent WebDAV scheme they had
implemented which used Web servers and state
based URLs in certificates to provide instant
revocation notification and low processing overheads.
CAOPS-WG – IGTF Meeting
This meeting discussed the current work of the
International Grid Trust Federation, and how it was
evolving and continually growing. New CA members
had been added, Rumania, for example, and other
countries, such as Taiwan, were likely to be added
very soon.
David Kelsey gave a presentation about trust in
authorisation, and said that it was now time to start
looking at validating the trustworthiness of VOMS
servers that issue authorisation credentials, since
people were still wrongly thinking that trust in a CA is
sufficient to mean that an AA is trustworthy. Prof
Chadwick found this to be a refreshing breakthrough
in that people were now finally beginning to realise
that trust in authorisation was a completely separate
layer to trust in authentication, and that it needed to
be managed just as rigorously and carefully as trust
in CAs.
Furthermore, technical measures were needed for
enforcing this trust in just the same way as technical
measures were needed to enforce the trust in CAs.
Fortunately, this was something that Prof Chadwick
had been working on for many years, and
consequently his group had already built trust
enforcing mechanisms into the PERMIS
authorisation infrastructure.
GridNet2 Workshop
At this workshop, each UK participant described the
work that they were doing as a result of GridNet2
funding. Prof Chadwick described his work within the
OGSA-Authz-WG over the last 4 years.
LoA Research Group
Mike Jones from Manchester presented the results of
the Level of Assurance/Authentication (LoA) survey
that they had recently carried out. This showed that
most respondents regarded LoA as an important or
essential requirement in federated environments, and
that tools to support this should be made available to
the community. The utility of the LoA had already
been effectively demonstrated in projects such as
FAME-PERMIS, run by Manchester University. In a
new FW7 Integrated Project, that was due to start on
1 January 2008, Prof Chadwick would be developing
tools to enable SPs and IdPs to compute the LoAs of
authentication sessions, so that they can be used in
authorisation decision making.
Express Authentication Profile
Duane presented the latest developments in
specifying an SP’s policies for authentication and
message encryption. Prof Chadwick raised the issue
that authorisation still was not being covered, and
that this was equally important in order for a client to
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.7 Mr Xiaoyu Chen – Brunel
be able to establish a successful session. The area
director Blair Dillaway agreed, and further stated that
the current drafts were worrying in that they strongly
coupled the policy specification to the transport
mechanism via EPRs. He suggested that these should
be de-coupled, and the document authors appeared
to agree to this (as does Prof Chadwick), so Prof
Chadwick hoped that the next drafts would do this, as
well as indicating how authorisation policies could
also be added.
Overall Comment
The level of attendance at OGF meetings was falling.
Prof Chadwick considered that perhaps this reflected
the lower importance researchers were placing on the
production of Grid-specific standards and profiles, or
perhaps on the slow pace at which the OGF standards
were produced. Either way, it was a cause for some
concern, and Prof Chadwick was starting to question
whether attending these meetings was a cost-effective
use of time and resources. He suggested that other
standards forums such as IETF, Liberty Alliance and
OASIS might be more productive.
3.6.9
OGF22
OGSA-Authz-WG Meeting
Prof Chadwick chaired the working group session,
which proved to be very productive. The group
agreed an aggressive schedule for producing its final
deliverables (protocol profiles) for public comment,
and closing down the OGSA-Authz-WG at the
Barcelona meeting (OGF 23) or, at the latest, the one
after that. The minutes of the meeting have been
posted at:
https://forge.gridforum.org/sf/go/doc15093
The major contentious issue was what to do about
standardising the attributes and obligations that are
passed in the current protocol profiles, if the current
WG is to close down. After a long discussion, an
impasse was reached, so it was likely that nothing
would happen in the short term, until enough people
came together to push for either a new WG or an
update to the current Authz charter. Either way, it
was felt that this would be a long term effort as it
would be based on the requirements of actual user
groups who were actively using the profiles that had
already been specified.
Demonstration of OGSA-Authz
Interworking
Several members of the Authz group demonstrated
interworking between different products based on the
OGSA-Authz specifications. These were GT4,
PERMIS, VOMS, GP-BOX, and Sun’s XACML PDP.
This shows that the profile standards produced by the
OGSA Authz working group are now maturing and
are ready for wide-scale adoption.
Security Area Group Meeting
This meeting highlighted the security work that was
being planned during the week, as well as
summarising the output of the OGSA Authz meeting
that had met earlier that day. It is clear that overall
the amount of effort that is available to push security
standards/research topics forward at the OGF is less
than the number of topics that could be explored.
This is a pity, since the OGF has done some good
work in helping to ensure interworking between
different security component providers, but in some
respects it has been technology push as the
application developers have either not seen the need
for the advanced security tools that have been made
available or have made do with simple quick fix
and/or home grown solutions.
Other Meetings
There were various other general interest meetings
during the week, such as the Town Hall Meeting to
discuss future directions of the OGF, an invited talk
on Cloud Computing and the plenary by Charlie
Catlett.
As always, a valuable part of attending the OGF was
the ability to network with other researchers whom it
would otherwise be more difficult to meet.
3.7
Mr Xiaoyu Chen –
Brunel
Mr Xiaoyu Chen is based at the School of Engineering
and Design, Brunel University.
For a summary of Mr Xiaoyu Chen’s GridNet2
activities, see section 2.7, Mr Xiaoyu Chen – Brunel.
3.7.1
OGF21
Mr Chen was co-chair of the OGF-UR group and a
member of the OGF-RUS working group and
participated in the sessions of these two working
groups at OGF21.
UR-WG Session
The UR-WG was being re-chartered and aimed to
have recommendations for UR version 2.0 at
forthcoming OGFs. The content of the UR-WG
session was divided into three main parts:
•
Group re-chartering
•
Review of UR 1.0
•
UR 2.0 perspectives
The new chairs of UR-WG were Donal Fellows
(University of Manchester) and Mr Chen initially,
and there were plans to update the charter soon.
The Usage Record 1.0 (UR 1.0) had been widely
accepted as a standard usage presentation schema
and was being used in many production Grid projects
including EGEE/WLCG, UNICORE, SweGrid and etc.
With wider adoption and experienced
implementations, it had been observed that UR 1.0
lacked some elementary usage properties, such as
general VO and executing site property. Besides, the
UR 1.0 concentrated on the computational usage
metrics of a single batch job without fully or really
supporting data and network usage representation,
which were extremely desirable within UK e-Science
Grid.
It was therefore proposed to develop UR 2.0 so that
the usage record representation was updated as
follows:
•
To be a flexible information model (aligned with
OGSA information model)
•
To support computational, data and network
resource usages
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3 GridNet2 Reports
3.8 Mr Andrew Cooper – OERC
•
•
To extend usage representation for non-trivial
jobs (for example, a workflow job or service that
might stage a couple of batch jobs) including
computational, data and possible network usages
To have summary usage representation, which is
critical for RUS usages to reduce the number of
usage records
It was recommended within the session that an
experience document would be a reasonable starting
point. However, more considerations were needed to
format a strategy.
RUS-WG Session
The RUS-WG focused on discussion of the draft of
the RUS Core IDL specification. In the pre-release
draft version, RUS operations were refined and
generalised for service configuration, usage
population, usage query, usage modification and
auditing. Two controversial operations,
RUS::replaceUsageRecords and
RUS::extractUsageRecordIds, had been
removed from the RUS Core IDL specification and
replaced by general modification and extraction
operations. Further work needed to be done quickly
for rendering the RUS IDL specification, initially
based on WS-I profile and WS-RF profile. The
deadline for WS-I profile rendering was the first week
of December, 2007. The draft document was
submitted to the chairs. The draft document is
available at:
Pordes (OSG), Stephen Pickles (UK NGS), Stephen
Newhouse (OMII) and others.
The main contribution of Dr Delaitre’s team was
within the job submission area and consisted of
addressing interoperability issues on multi- Grids
using a portal-based solution. The advantage of a
portal-based solution is to hide the different
middleware and have a technology-neutral solution
which allows e-Scientists concentrate on their
research. Most scientists have run their applications
on one Grid and there was little support for them to
run the same applications in a multi-Grid
environment. Dr Delaitre’s solution was offered as a
service through the multi-Grid GIN resource testing
portal, which aims to support major Grids, including
OSG, TeraGrid, NGS, NorduGrid and EGEE. The
GIN-portal supported the first four Grids where a
workflow could be designed and components of the
workflow could be executed on these different Grids
with support for different certificates.
Some collaboration work started with Stuart Martin
from Globus following Dr Delaitre’s visit to Argonne
and Fermilab in June 2006. Between June and
September 2006, a GIN resource testing portal was
deployed and tested with resources on TeraGrid,
OSG, UK NGS and EGEE. The main objectives of the
GIN resource testing portal, which were disseminated
at GGF18, are listed below.
•
To allow members of the GIN VO to test GIN
resources
http://forge.ogf.org/sf/go/artf6090?nav=1
•
To verify integrity of different infrastructure
3.8
•
To check interoperation of different and multiGrid infrastructure
Mr Andrew Cooper –
OERC
•
To provide repeated and user interactive testing
Andrew Cooper’s report is incorporated into Dr
Andrew Martin’s report.
•
To run applications on a multi-Grid environment
For more information, see section 3.26, Dr Andrew
Martin – Oxford.
These main objectives were presented in more detail
at the GIN-CG.
For a summary of Mr Andrew Cooper’s GridNet2
activities, see section 2.8, Mr Andrew Cooper –
Oxford.
Dr Delaitre had a number of discussions after the
GIN presentation with key members, including
Gabriele Garzoglio from OSG, about the GIN
resource testing portal and interoperability issues on
different Grids. Dr Delaitre carried out a number of
live demonstrations of the GIN resource testing
portal at Washington by demonstrating execution of
multi-Grid applications on OSG, TeraGrid, UK NGS
and EGEE. Dr Delaitre had discussions with Globus
about the MDS infrastructure used for testing the
GIN resources. Dr Delaitre also talked with Ruth
Pordes about experiences with the P-Grade GIN
resource testing portal to run a biology application on
a multi-Grid environment. Dr Delaitre reviewed the
work done so far on the GIN resource testing portal
with Stuart Martin and devised future plans about
the GIN resource testing portal.
3.9
Dr Thierry Delaitre –
Westminster
Dr Thierry Delaitre is Systems and Services Manager
at the School of Informatics, University of
Westminster.
For a summary of Dr Thierry Delaitre’s GridNet2
activities, see section 2.9, Dr Thierry Delaitre –
Westminster.
3.9.1
GGF18
GIN-CG
Dr Delaitre presented work progress on
interoperability issues on multi-Grids using a
portal-based solution at the GIN-CG. The GIN-CG
was set up to explore the interoperation and
interoperability issues in running and using global
Grids, and contributed to the broader Grid
community in the context of the e-Science Function
of the OGF within the area of Grid Operations. The
main directors from most Grids attended the GIN-CG
session, including Dane Skow (TeraGrid), Ruth
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Attending the GGF18 was very beneficial for Dr
Delaitre in relation to the GIN-CG, Westminster and
NGS. Experiences gained through this multi-Grid
interoperability work were very valuable to the
community and to Dr Delaitre’s work at Westminster
as an NGS partner.
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.10 Dr Abdeslem Djaoui – STFC
3.10
Dr Abdeslem Djaoui
– STFC
Dr Abdeslem Djaoui’s reports are consolidated into
Steve Fisher’s reports. For more information, see
section 3.12, Dr Steve Fisher – STFC.
For a summary of Dr Djaoui’s GridNet2 activities, see
section 2.10, Dr Abdeslem Djaoui – STFC.
3.11
Mr Donal Fellows –
Manchester
Mr Donal Fellows is software engineer at the
Research Computing Services, University of
Manchester.
For a summary of Mr Fellows’ GridNet2 activities, see
section 2.11, Mr Donal Fellows – Manchester.
3.11.1
OGF21 and OGF22
architecture for execution and management of jobs
on a higher-level Grid that abstracts the details of its
implementation away from the model that it presents
to users. The work in OGSA also encompasses work
to try to “cross-fertilise” best practice and lessons
learned from one group to another, which greatly
multiplies the effectiveness of the groups concerned.
Outcomes during GridNet2
Mr Fellows made significant contributions to the
following documents:
•
The RSS group (co-chaired by Mr Fellows) moved
a document through its public comment stage
and is working on resolving the comments.
•
The JSDL group prepared an errata release to the
JSDL v1 specification, and published extensions
for HPC integration and Parallel Applications.
•
The OGSA group published the following
documents:
Mr Fellows used his funding to attend two OGF
meetings (OGF21 and OGF22) and two OGSA F2F
meetings (at Fujitsu America in Sunnyvale, CA, in
August 2007, and at Imperial College in London in
January 2008). This enabled him to participate
significantly in the following OGF working groups:
•
A glossary of Grid terms,
•
A document on how to model entities on the
Grid and draw the models together
•
An updated description of usage scenarios for
specifications in the OGSA space for the
execution of non-trivial jobs
•
Open Grid Software Architecture (OGSA)
•
Job Submission Description Language (JSDL)
Responsibilities
•
Usage Record (UR)
Mr Fellows took on the following responsibilities:
•
OGSA Resource Usage Service (RUS)
•
Co-chair of the UR-WG
•
OGSA Resource Selection Service (RSS)
•
Editor of the Reference Model
•
HPC Profile (HPCP)
3.12
•
Reference Model (RM)
•
GLUE
•
Grid Scheduling Architecture (GSA)
•
Grid Resource Allocation Agreement Protocol
(GRAAP)
Mr Fellows also attended the ET-CG to help work
towards a common core syllabus for teaching people
about the Grid, which was of key importance for
making Grid Computing a long-term research field.
The major themes of Mr Fellows’ activities within
OGF were split into four areas:
1. Description of Grid Entities, which encompasses
his work within the JSDL, RM and GLUE groups
Dr Steve Fisher –
STFC
Dr Steve Fisher works in the Particle Physics
Department at the STFC’s Rutherford Appleton
Laboratory.
The following report includes the activities for Dr
Abdeslem Djaoui (Rutherford Appleton Laboratory)
and Mr Mark Leese (Daresbury Laboratory), who
were also funded by Dr Steve Fisher’s GridNet2
award.
For summaries of the GridNet2 activities covered by
this award, see the following sections:
•
Section 2.10, Dr Abdeslem Djaoui – STFC
•
Section 2.12, Dr Steve Fisher – STFC
•
Section 2.24, Mr Mark Leese – STFC
2. Discovery of Grid Entities, which encompasses
his work within the RSS, JSDL, HPCP and GSA
groups
3.12.1
3. Accounting of Grid Entities, which encompasses
his work within the UR and RUS groups
Dr Fisher, Dr Djaoui and Mr Leese all attended
GGF15. Dr Fisher and Dr Djaoui also attended the
INFOD-WG that was held immediately prior to
GGF15.
4. Architecture for Higher-Order Grids, which
encompasses his work within the OGSA, GSA and
GRAAP groups
The work within the OGSA and GSA groups at the
architectural level is part of drawing the other strands
together to produce a significant part of the
GGF15
INFOD-WG – October 05
An INFOD-WG F2F took part on the 2 and 3 October
and was hosted by Oracle. The two days were spent
discussing the specification and how to respond to
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3.12 Dr Steve Fisher – STFC
comments on the complexity and size of the
specification. It was agreed that the specification
should be split in two or three smaller parts with the
first one being the base specification. Dr Fisher and
Dr Djaoui contributed ideas on how to make this base
specification an extension to existing notification
specifications, adding a registry type functionality for
metadata, but not replicating the publish/subscribe
paradigm which is already covered by more than one
specification.
Progress
Dr Djaoui made a presentation in the INFOD session
on the new base specification interfaces (see
https://forge.gridforum.org/sf/go/doc6337) and Dr
Fisher took the minutes. There was a good level of
interest from those who do not normally attend
INFOD-WG meetings as well as from the regulars.
The link between INFOD and WSN was discussed.
Following a short update on development of the V2
schemas, Mr Leese presented a list of known open
issues. A selection of these issues follows:
This was the first report.
NM-WG (Leese)
The NM-WG held two detailed design discussion
sessions at GGF15, which Mr Leese ran as NM-WG
co-chair. There was attendance and some input from
industry representatives, including Cisco and AT&T.
•
Schema Normalisation
Depending on the scenario, there were differing
data items which could be abstracted out of the
data section of a schema and into the metadata.
Evaluation
If a system was returning a lot of data, all of
which had the same timestamp, the system
should not include the same timestamp for each
piece of data. By extension, it would be better to
pull out certain pieces of data and refer to it just
once, most likely as metadata applied to many
pieces of data. Measurements did not need to be
grouped by something other than the current
metadata.
The F2F meeting was very useful. After the GGF
session everyone was finally convinced that the
specification must be broken down into manageable
chunks. This was an important step.
Further Action
Work on breaking up the specification.
Progress
This was the first report.
The group believed there were four options for
further consideration:
OGSA-WG (Dr Djaoui)
•
Do not normalise but just zip/compress all
data to reduce the overhead of retransmitting
unchanged data
•
Define just metadata in a schema
•
Use RDF (Resource Description Framework)
•
Consult the wider Web Services community
Dr Djaoui attended most of the sessions by the
groups related to the OGSA-WG, such as BES and
Data and Information Model. In particular, Dr Djaoui
was asked by the OGSA-RSS-WG to be present for
their presentation where discussed the relationship of
RSS with information services was discussed. This
discussion created a better understanding of where
the boundary between the two lay and there was
agreement to continue discussions in the future.
•
NM-WG planned to use an extension to the
schema’s namespace. In the current format, this
is available at:
On the 6 October, Dr Djaoui took part in the
OGSA-WG F2F which was hosted by IBM.
Dr Djaoui made a presentation on some changes
needed in the OGSA document version 1.5. Following
a discussion, these changes were accepted and Dr
Djaoui was asked to update the document. Dr Djaoui
also explained how INFOD (with the registry
functionality) could be leveraged for the OGSA
architecture, and the importance of giving the OGSA
requirements to INFOD before the specification is
finalised.
During the Information Model discussion, when the
GLUE schema versus CIM was again being discussed,
Dr Djaoui argued that the fact that GLUE was widely
used in deployed Grid should not be ignored and that
GLUE and CIM were not irreconcilable. Dr Djaoui
suggested that the Information Modelling group
should collaborate with the GLUE team, so they could
work out a mapping from one to the other.
Evaluation
There was some progress on bridging the gap
between INFOD and OGSA
Further Action
The GLUE/CIM relationship should be followed up.
Page 78
Schema versioning
http://ggf.org/ns/nmwg/base/VERSION
A GGF document on namespaces (Standardised
Namespaces for XML infosets in GGF) was about
to be published and was to be consulted.
Versions were to be specified using major and
minor numbers. Versioning should be explicit, so
that a receiving system could decide whether it
supported the functionality required by that
version of a schema. No default version should be
implied when version information was missing or
incomplete.
•
GridFTP logs
It should be possible to express GridFTP logs
using the schemas. This would be of interest to
users or network researchers requiring an
application rather than raw network view of
network performance. An NM-WG schema
representation would assist development of a
data gathering mechanism.
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.12 Dr Steve Fisher – STFC
•
Validation Authority
Approval/compliance was indicated by placing a
schema in the NM-WG namespace. When a new
tool was developed, or a group proposed a new
version of a tool or characteristic specific schema,
how would the new/modified schemas gain
NM-WG approval? Mr Leese was concerned that
the NM-WG should define an approval
mechanism very soon.
The third NM-WG session was dedicated to updates
on projects making use of the V1 and draft V2
schemas, including demonstrations. Mr Leese
presented current European efforts, including the
performance monitoring component of EGEE-JRA4
(Development of Network Services) based at NeSC
and EPCC, plus his own gridmon work for GridPP
and the UK NGS.
It was particularly pleasing to demonstrate the
EGEE-JRA4 Mediator and associated Diagnostic
Tool. The Mediator had been a significant proof of
concept for the NM-WG, since it could present a
single (NM-WG) interface to data consumers to
several underlying NM-WG-compliant network
monitoring infrastructures. The Mediator was again
demonstrated obtaining data from different networks
and monitoring infrastructure, including the GEANT
(DANTE), Abilene (Internet2) and ESNet networks
via the perfSONAR infrastructure, this time with the
added benefit of data graphing using the Diagnostic
Tool.
The group held its outreach session on Tuesday 4th
October. Jason Zurawski presented an update on the
schema work, followed by Eric Boyd and Mr Leese
providing abridged versions of their perfSONAR and
European update talks from the previous day’s
“demonstrations” session.
While the NM-WG had varied WS exposure, active
group participants were, in the main, networking
experts, not software engineers. The group felt that it
needed to fast-track the development of its WS
expertise, so that the group could develop Web
Services solutions making use of the NM-WG
schemas without distracting from the group's core
objectives: applying the group’s networking
knowledge to the schemas themselves. To this end,
Mr Leese recruited Marlon Pierce and Shrideep
Pallickara from the Community Grids Lab at Indiana
University to run a half-day overview of Web
Services, culminating in a lengthy Q&A session.
The session was run as a community activity since it
appeared that the NM-WG was not the only group in
this situation.
Evaluation
The NM-WG has made progress through productive
F2F meetings. The value of meeting F2F and
intensively working through a pre-agreed set of issues
should not be underestimated. Experience had shown
the group that this was far more productive than
telephone conferences and e-mail discussions.
Holding F2F meetings appeared to focus everyone’s
mind on providing the information, opinions and
arguments that were required to make the necessary
decisions.
The US group members were updated on European
work and vice-versa, keeping the work in-step and
facilitating knowledge sharing.
The wider Grid community were updated on what the
NM-WG was doing.
Further Action
The group planned to produce a set of common tool
and characteristic specific schemas (for example,
ping, iperf and traceroute) which would satisfy the
majority of users needs, at least in the short-medium
term.
Progress
This was the first report.
NM-WG Community Activity (Leese)
Web Services Performance: Issues and
Research
The NM-WG was taking advantage of the near
ubiquitous nature of XML and Web Services (WS) to
exchange data. XML provided a convenient syntax for
building the data structures required for the
information the group wished to exchange, while WS
provide platform and programming language
independence. WS were also a sensible interface to
use for inter-working with Grid systems, such as
resource brokering middleware, which may, for
example, use network performance information in
selecting the Compute and Storage Elements used for
running Grid jobs.
In general, the NM-WG did not find data transit to be
a problem, but processing XML on the end machines,
namely the relatively large size of the NM-WG XML
documents compared to the amount of useful data
they encapsulated and the memory requirements of
large DOM-based trees, was a cause for concern. The
group was aware of performance improvement
techniques, such as binary encoding of XML, and
made steps to alleviate problems, such as separating
data and metadata so that the metadata need only be
transmitted once, and can then be referred to using a
single metadata ID field.
While this session asked the right questions, the
answers were far less forthcoming, and there were
differences of opinion between the commercial and
academic speakers. The workshop did reveal that
XML (de)serialisation was the main performance
bottleneck, since XML markup was verbose and, as a
result, computationally expensive to generate and
parse.
NM-WG would continue with Web Services, as the
benefits still outweighed the disadvantages. It was
hoped that the performance problems would
diminish through a mix of WS technology reaching
maturity, hardware speed increases and the
implementation of intelligent caching of recent data.
Evaluation
NM-WG learned that even the Web Services experts
did not have all the answers to WS performance, and
that the group needed to press ahead.
Further Action
The group planned to carry on with WS.
Progress
This was the first report.
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3.12 Dr Steve Fisher – STFC
3.12.2
needed to extend interest with Grid researchers
and developers.
GGF16
Dr Fisher attended GGF16 and the INFOD-WG that
also took place at the same time.
•
There was a lot of interest in using plots of
network performance to analyse performance
problems, for network and Grid operators, and
Grid users. Examples showed how useful this
could be, but it was noted that some form of
guide would be needed for helping to identify or
rule out common problems using graphs of
performance. There was a lot of interest in such a
guide.
•
Not for the first time, there was some scepticism
about network operators wanting to share data.
They had traditionally been very protective of
their performance data, since it could be
commercially and security sensitive. In response,
NM-WG had some research and educational
operators (ESNet, Internet2 and DANTE) who
were ready to share data and actively want to
share it. While access to data was an important
issue, NM-WG’s work was predominantly
concerned with providing a mechanism for
sharing the data, not persuading operators to
share the data itself. The group’s best option here
was to lead by example, complete development of
the schemas and put them into service with
enthusiastic adopters, so that the benefits could
be readily seen in real life scenarios.
INFOD-WG – February 06
The INFOD-WG F2F was hosted by Oracle but
situated in the GGF hotel. Much of the time was
spent going through the use cases to ensure that the
draft specification would match them. In the GGF
session, Dr Fisher presented the status of the group
and its work and plans.
Evaluation
The F2F meeting was once again very useful.
Unfortunately, not being in the US, the GGF was not
as well attended as it sometimes was.
Further Action
The INFOD-WG planned to work on finalising the
specification so that the document could be
submitted and the 60 day public comment period
ended by GGF18. The group also intended to plan
implementations, and consider an advanced
specification and matching use cases.
Progress
The group had finalised definition of what goes into
the base specification, and decided to adopt WSN
Notify rather than inventing something else for the
basic notify call.
3.12.3
GGF17
Mr Leese attended GGF17.
NM-WG
The full NM-WG report is available at:
http://nmwg.internet2.edu/meetings/ggf17/nmwgggf17Summary.txt
The second session was advertised as a discussion on
the following question:
The NM-WG schemas are gaining popularity in the
research and educational network domain within
Europe and the US, for example with EGEE, DANTE
and Internet2. What are the barriers to their
adoption (or trials) in Asia?
During the second session Mr Leese spoke to a
Japanese Grid academic, which quickly became a
useful and very revealing exercise:
•
He felt that the problem in Japan (at least) was
that there was a large separation between
computer scientists and the networking groups,
with no available to bridge the gap. He also
observed that local networking people did not
feel a need to update their operational practices,
that is, they were happy to drive network
equipment using just a command-line interface,
because it was sufficient for their needs. A
concept like Web Services would therefore be
viewed as “too new”, with unproven benefits, and
would garner little interest as a result.
•
He also felt that while plots of performance were
useful, the case for adaptive Grid applications
and more inclusive/autonomous network
operation was not (yet) sufficiently strong to
justify the time required to be more involved, a
view he believed would be shared by his
networking colleagues. It was hoped that the
deployment of a major NM-WG compliant
network monitoring infrastructure such
perfSONAR would change this perception.
•
The contact's group would be happy to look at
software using the NM-WG schemas, but as
always, time and people are in short supply, so it
needed to be a “low hassle” exercise. This was
defined as software that could be easily installed
on a PC. This was something that NM-WG could
potentially investigate.
NM-WG held two sessions at GGF17, which Mr Leese
ran as NM-WG co-chair. In the first session, Mr
Leese gave a 90 minute presentation covering
NM-WG basics: group history; the group’s previous
work (version 1 schemas, including lessons learned);
and the current V2 work.
The slides for the presentation are available at:
http://nmwg.internet2.edu/meetings/ggf17/nmwgggf17AllSlides.ppt
The V1 and V2 material was reinforced with
overviews of the relevant EGEE-JRA4 and
perfSONAR work, complete with simple
demonstrations of each. Background was also given
as to why this was important work from the point-ofview of both network operators and Grid users.
•
There were 12 people present for the presentation
session. As Mr Leese was the only “core” group
member present, this represented better
attendance at the general outreach session by
non-core members than previous GGFs. This was
especially pleasing given the somewhat
disappointing turnout at this event. However,
several of the 12 were networking or telco
professionals, again indicating that the group
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3.12 Dr Steve Fisher – STFC
•
•
The contact was not sure how monitoring
infrastructures such as perfSONAR interrogated
the underlying network infrastructure, but
expressed the view that both Cisco and Juniper
equipment is popular in Asia, so any software
should work with those network boxes. For
clarification, Mr Leese pointed out that there was
much more to this work than simple SNMP
polling of devices.
On a positive note, the contact believed the
situation was improving, giving the example of a
South Korean team who had used Web Services
to link an in-house resource scheduler to
software produced by another group(s). The
Korean team was very surprised at how easy it
had been to use Web Services to interoperate
disparate software, and were now more receptive
to WS options.
This all suggested that a more inclusive approach was
required to achieve an example deployment in Asia.
NM-WG would need to capture a group's
requirements and actively assist the group in building
software which implements the schemas.
Alternatively, a group might be open to deploying an
instance/node of an existing infrastructure, such as
perfSONAR, if it met the local requirements and a
certain amount of support was available. This was an
issue for discussion during a forthcoming NM-WG
meeting/phone call.
As a slight aside, some separate attendees thought
that Asia might only take the NM-WG work when it
was complete, analyse it, and then adapt it to their
own requirements.
Other Information
Mr Leese also visited the Grid World Japan
exhibition floor and spoke with several exhibitors,
ranging from services companies such as Fujitsu to
OEMs, including HP. There was clearly more
commercial adoption of Grid computing in Asia-Pac
than US-Europe, yet while the people Mr Leese spoke
to knew that the network was essential to bandwidthdependent and large-scale Grid deployments, the
impression Mr Leese received was that no one was
doing anything novel with the commodity IP
networks they were using, or the Grid middleware
and applications themselves.
The exception was NaReGi, a Japanese academic
Grid project, the Grid Network Group of which were
working to produce a secure and high performance
Grid network middleware. This included protocol
research and investigating management of network
resources based on Virtual Organisations. NM-WG
relevant work would include the real-time
measurement of Grid application network traffic
(flow-based measurement of RTT, throughput etc.).
Mr Leese identified this as another potential door
into Asia for NM-WG.
Evaluation
The NM-WG sessions and GridWorld exhibition area
were very useful. The group now had a handle on why
there was little interest in their work from Asia-Pac.
As a result, the group was in a better position to
address the disinterest, and until the group could do
so, the group valued the contact with people who
provided valuable feedback on the theoretical aspects
of their work, but did not have the overhead of
producing implementations themselves.
Further Action
Further action needed to be discussed within NMWG. NM-WG was keen to build presence in Asia-Pac,
but was already under-volunteered. Based on the
comments NM-WG has received, NM-WG could
postpone this until the base schemas were complete
(thus freeing up effort) and a stable “real-life”
demonstrator was in place (for example, perfSONAR
deployed by Abilene and DANTE). At the very least,
NM-WG needed to maintain relationships with the
new contacts.
Progress
Since his last report, Mr Leese was involved in
developing the NM-WG schemas through group
conference calls, which Mr Leese chairs.
For the version 2 schemas, the group’s roadmap
specified production of a GGF Experimental
Document, summarising details of trial V2
implementations and operational experience. This,
NM-WG hoped, would naturally lead into a GGF
Recommendations Documents, providing a technical
specification of the schemas and their intended use.
As development of the schemas moved towards a
conclusion, with the schemas already having seen
some trial deployment within the ESNet, Abilene and
GÉANT2 networks, the group felt comfortable
moving straight to a full recommendation.
NM-WG was planning how best to produce the full
recommendation, which was complicated by a need
to package and make available the base schemas and
pre-defined NM-WG schemas, that is, the base
components from which particular performance
characteristic and performance measuring tool
specific schemas were produced, together with the
sample schemas already defined for the most
common characteristics and tools.
Mr Leese would be involved in producing the
recommendation document.
Grid High Performance Networking Research Group
The work of GHPN focuses on the relationship
between network research and the development of
Grid applications and infrastructure. GHPN’s work
attacks the problem space from both sides,
identifying the following issues:
•
Requirements of Grid applications which were
not being met or understood by the networking
community
•
Advanced networking solutions that were not
being used by the Grid
GHPN had two sessions scheduled for this event. It
was unfortunate that the first session was cancelled
as late as 5th May. The second session consisted of a
series of presentations following the topic of Grid
Network Interface.
Two of the three talks were particularly interesting in
that they described projects aiming to closely
interface Grid applications with the network. This
was of interest to both NM-WG and ESLEA, the
project driving exploitation of the UKLight
infrastructure, which includes development of
network control plane software for automated
provisioning of circuit-switched lightpaths.
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3.12 Dr Steve Fisher – STFC
•
Overview of Grid networking and applications
research in Japan, Akira Hirano (Senior
Research Engineer, NTT Network Innovation
Labs, Japan).
Akira spoke about application-driven network
capacity-on-demand. This included G-lambda
(http://www.g-lambda.net), a project aiming to
create a standard Web Services interface between
Grid and network resource management systems,
with which Grid applications could make ondemand requests for guaranteed bandwidth
channels.
•
Enlightened Computing: Applications-Driven
Adaptive Compute, Instrument, and Network
Resources Integration, Yufeng Xin (Senior
Scientist, MCNC, RTP NC, USA).
EnLIGHTened Computing aimed to achieve
dynamic and adaptive on-demand use of end-toend networking resources. In a broadly similar
way to G-lambda, the project aimed to create an
optical network test bed supporting virtual subnetworks which provided various QoSguaranteed end-to-end links, over which Grid
applications had some level of control. This
would involve development of a novel optical
control plane, and associated APIs at the Grid
application, network resource management and
optical control plane layers.
The work was relevant to ESLEA, while the
project’s aim of near-real-time feedback of
resource (including network) performance
measurements to Grid applications and
middleware was of interest to NM-WG. The
performance issues of Web Services meant that it
was infeasible for the NM-WG schemas to be
used in the network control plane. Indeed, this
was not their purpose; they were designed for
sharing data at higher layers, including the
network-application interface.
Having attended the BoF at a previous GGF, which
led to the formation of this group, Mr Leese was
pleased to see that there was a good draft of their first
document. In particular, it covered issues likely to
affect UK e-Science, including middle-box interaction
with Access Grid, Globus, GridFTP and high
bandwidth, long distance networks, as used by
projects such as Reality Grid for linking
geographically distributed Grid resources.
It was not clear from the meeting however, that the
document adequately covered all relevant scenarios.
For example, there was no coverage of IP multicast,
which can severely impact Access Grid operation.
CCLRC was well placed to review the work, since it
already hosted a number of e-Science relevant
scenarios, including Access Grid, compute clusters in
a DMZ and large-scale HPC facilities (HPCx) behind
a firewall.
Evaluation
FI-RG could have an impact on UK e-Science but
would be of little interest to non-networkers until the
third document (evaluation of middle-box
approaches and solutions) was available.
Further Action
It was necessary to ensure that the first FI-RG
document considered all use cases which CCLRC
were aware of, providing fresh input if not, with the
view that the document evaluating middle-box
approaches and solutions could made use of at a later
date. The FI-RG was actively seeking more active
participants.
3.12.4
INFOD-WG F2F – May 06
Dr Fisher attended the INFOD-WG in May 06.
No standards work took place, but the meeting was
useful in that it brought the G-lambda and
EnLIGHTened Computing projects to Mr Leese’s
attention. Mr Leese also notified ESLEA of their
existence, in case there was expertise which could be
shared.
This F2F meeting was hosted by IBM in New York.
Once again, the INFOD-WG looked at the
specification with regard to the use cases. The
INFOD-WG decided that in order to get the
specification finalised according to the plan at
GGF16, the group would have to concentrate on that
and not tidy up the use case document. INFOD-WG
would still make the use case document available but
not submit it formally. This was by analogy with the
WSN practice.
Further Action
Evaluation
NM-WG needed to consider making closer contact
with G-lambda and EnLIGHTened Computing to
look, at the very least, in more detail at their
protocols for network-application communication.
Considerable progress was made. The remaining
work on the specification was mostly editing.
Firewall Issues-Research Group
The group planned to tidy up the specification so that
the document could be submitted and its 60 day
public comment period ended by GGF18. This was
mostly just editing and proof reading.
Evaluation
FI-RG planned to create three documents that
covered the following topics:
Further Action
1. Recording and classifying common issues which
Grid jobs faced when their network connections
encounter network middle-boxes (firewalls,
application level or VPN gateways etc.)
Progress
2. Evaluating available IETF middle-box protocols
and functions
3.12.5
3. Evaluating approaches and solutions for
addressing the issues raised in the first document
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Almost everything had been decided for the
specification.
GGF18
Dr Fisher attended GGF18 and the INFOD-WG
meeting held immediately before GGF18.
At the F2F meeting, the INFOD-WG discussed the
following topics:
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.12 Dr Steve Fisher – STFC
•
The feedback received from the reviewers of the
INFOD base specification.
This included extensive input from the WSN
community.
•
Progress with INFOD implementations
•
Preparation for the main GGF meeting
•
Various pending issues – including the precise
role of the disseminator in the INFOD model and
the role of “Beacons” and “PO Boxes”.
The aim of this was to try to pin down what
would go into a further specification.
Dr Fisher replaced Susan Malaika as co-chair. Dieter
Gawlick remained as the other co-chair.
As usual, the F2F meeting was much more useful
than the formal GGF session.
3.12.6
INFOD-WG F2F –
February 07
Dr Fisher attended the INFOD-WG F2F meeting.
This was a kick-off meeting for the INFOD
implementation project being led by Knoxville and
Oak Ridge. Much of the meeting was spent planning
the implementation and sharing ideas. The main
value of the meeting was to allow the new people
doing the implementation to meet those who had
been working on the specification.
3.12.7
OGF19
Dr Fisher attended OGF19.
INFOD-WG
Due to various travel restrictions, there were no
INFOD sessions at this OGF but Dr Fisher gave a
status presentation to the data area.
SAGA
Dr Fisher presented work being done at CCLRC by A
Paventhan and himself on a service discovery API.
The SAGA group liked the idea and agreed that it
would fill gaps in the SAGA specification as an addon package. OGF20 was set as a target to produce a
written specification.
3.12.8
OGF20
Dr Fisher, Dr Djaoui and Mr Leese all attended
OGF20.
INFOD-WG
Due to various travel restrictions, there were, once
again, no INFOD sessions at this OGF but Dr Fisher
gave a status presentation to the data area. He said
that there would definitely be INFOD sessions at
OGF21 and that progress had been very good, the
group having very recently submitted a revised
specification. It had taken a lot of work and long
discussions to get it finalised.
OGSA-WG
During this meeting, Dr Djaoui had further
discussions with OGSA-WG members on the best way
to address composition and coordination of services
and the role of asynchronous messaging. OGSA-WG
was already looking into workflow in relation to JSDL
and collecting use cases. Dr Djaoui opted to attend
all the sessions on workflow during the meeting and
discussing the status of workflow in OGSA at the F2F
on the last day. Dr Djaoui also attended and
contributed to the discussions for WS-Naming,
information services and the OGSA glossary.
On the last day, during the OGSA F2F, Dr Djaoui
gave a high level talk explaining what OGSA should
do. For details, see:
http://forge.gridforum.org/sf/go/doc14513?nav=1
The main features of WS-BPEL and Microsoft WF
were discussed and areas for possible work
presented. It was agreed that in order to better
understand what OGSA should do, OGF should look
into "Community Practice Documents" on the use of
workflow. This should allow the identification of
interesting use cases for OGSA to work on.
SAGA
Dr Fisher presented a draft proposal for the Service
Discovery specification. Some suggestions were made
on how to improve it and Dr Fisher was encouraged
to produce a revised draft. A. Paventhan (not
currently GridNet2-funded) gave a demo of his
implementation.
3.12.9
OGF21
Dr Fisher and Dr Djaoui attended OGF21.
INFOD-WG
Instead of having the usual F2F meeting adjacent to
the OGF, the INFOD-WG requested 4 sessions during
the OGF. This turned out to be much less effective for
getting work done. Nevertheless, the group were able
to agree on most parts of the revision to the base
specification and get a much clearer idea of what
would be in the more advanced INFOD specification.
OGSA-WG
Although it was only possible for Dr Djaoui to attend
2.5 days of OGF21, he was able to participate in
discussions at the "Web 2.0/Grid workflow/Parallel
computing" workshop. He had some useful
exchanges with Microsoft representatives on the new
Concurrency and Coordination Runtime (CCR) and
Decentralised Software Services (DSS) technologies
and their relevance to Grid computing. The
relevance to asynchronous messaging, something Dr
Djaoui had been advocating within OGSA-WG and
OGF since OGF19, turned out to be particularly
timely, as CCR is mainly about making asynchronous
messaging and coordination easier to program and, it
was said, was allowing a whole range of applications
to be developed in a variety of disciplines.
The main non-commercial implementation project,
with much of the effort from the University of Texas,
Knoxville, was reported as moving forward well.
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3.13 Mr Andrew Harrison – Cardiff
Afterwards Dr Djaoui talked with some OGSA-WG
members about CCR/DSS technologies and how they
relate to OGF and OGSA. CCR was a runtime library
that was mainly used for multi-core programming
(MPI-like), but when combined with DSS, it offered a
powerful model for integrating distributed
applications. At the heart of CCR is the concept of a
port (a kind of message queue), but it is not clear at
this moment how this relates to messaging, SAGA or
the workflow activities in OGF. It is expected that the
proposed Community Practice Documents on service
composition would provide the necessary use cases to
help define what is needed in OGF. The group agreed
to continue to explore the topics of asynchronous
messaging and coordination further within the
Community Practice Documents activity.
Dr Djaoui also attended and contributed sessions on
Grids in the IT data centre workshop, Data/Compute
Affinity - Focus on Data Caching, and Grid Reliability
and Robustness.
SAGA
Dr Fisher presented a further draft proposal of the
Service Discovery specification. This time there were
only minor changes suggested and he was invited to
prepare one more draft to send around, at which
point the group would submit it to the OGF editor.
3.13
Mr Andrew Harrison
– Cardiff
Mr Andrew Harrison is a research fellow/associate at
the School of Computer Science, University of
Cardiff.
For a summary of Mr Harrison’s GridNet2 activities,
see section 2.13, Mr Andrew Harrison - Cardiff.
3.13.1
OGF20
Mr Harrison participated in the following workshops
at OGF20:
•
Secretary and Speaker: Sharing Workflows Workflow Management Research Group
(WFM-RG) session
•
Participant: OGSA Workflow
•
Participant: e-Arts and e-Humanities: e-Science
technologies and methodologies in Arts and
Humanities research, sessions 1 and 2
•
Participant: OMII Software Overview
Sharing Workflows Session
Mr Harrison was secretary and speaker at the
WFM-RG workshop. This workshop addressed how
workflows can be shared between different
applications, not so much from the perspective of the
standardisation of representation, but in terms of
crossing different software environments, sharing
“results” and provenance data and building
communities through workflow accessibility. Mr
Harrison’s presentation introduced the WHIP
project, funded by OMII, which recently started in
Cardiff. WHIP aimed to provide support for sharing
workflows, and more generally artefacts, or digital
“things” of any description, across different software
environments (for example, Web-based portals and
thick clients) and different distributed messaging
stacks (for example, WS/SOAP, raw HTTP, Web 2.0
Page 84
technologies such as feeds and blogs, and P2P
networks). The range of talks was interesting,
throwing up many challenges that are often domain
or workflow specific. The outcome, to be delivered at
OGF21, was a research document on application
scenarios. The aim of this document was to ascertain
the possible areas of overlap between domains, and
existing workflow engines. Mr Harrison would be
working on this document.
OGSA Workflow
This workshop focused on gathering use cases with
an end goal of standardizing workflow description
within OGSA. Mr Harrison had followed discussions
of this group on the mailing lists, and was interested
to see how this workshop went. Most of the
discussion centred on choosing a standard for
workflow representation. In particular, BPEL4WS
was discussed as an appropriate representation, as
was the Workflow Management Coalition (WFMC) - a
group of companies addressing workflow
standardisation through XPDL and UML. XPDL was
an abstract version of BPEL and led to BPEL 1.0.
Both the use case gathering and the representation
discussions seem at an early stage. Mr Harrison is
ambivalent about the adoption of BPEL based
descriptions. One of the factors for the development
of scufl — the language used by Taverna — was the
perceived inapplicability of BPEL to scientific
workflow. More generally, Mr Harrison believes
existing systems are unlikely to re-factor themselves
to fit in with an imposed representation. If current
systems were replaced by compliant systems, many
years of experience, expertise and development
would potentially be lost to the community.
Furthermore, as was clear from the WFM-RG
workshop, workflow requirements are often domain
specific and hence enactment-engine representations
can reflect this more easily than trying to adapt to an
umbrella representation.
e-Arts and e-Humanities
This was a very interesting BoF meeting in which a
number of projects presented their work in
integrating e-Science technologies with the arts and
humanities. Mr Harrison had a particular interest in
this area, having been an artist and theatre designer
before becoming a computer scientist. Presentations
included recent work at TextGrid in Germany, the
Arts and Humanities e-Science Initiative in the UK,
work emerging from the Center for Computation and
Technology (CCT) at Louisiana State University
(including a collaborative project with Cardiff on
music information retrieval) and the Associated
Motion Capture User Categories (AMUC) project,
based in Newcastle. This latter project, presented by
Sally-Jane Norman, was particularly interesting. It
was investigating cross domain mechanisms and
requirements for recording human motion, placing
dancers, artists and biomechanics into the same
room. A particular point made by Ms Norman
(paraphrased) was whether it was actually fruitful to
build a meta-language to enable cross referencing
and storage of diverse motion capture languages,
because in so doing, the peculiarities, which are the
strengths of the different languages, were lost in the
process. Mr Harrison saw an analogy with the
discussions surrounding workflow standardisation.
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.13 Mr Andrew Harrison – Cardiff
OMII Software Overview
Because of Mr Harrison’s involvement in the WHIP
project, he took this opportunity to catch up with the
latest developments in the software coming from
OMII. The WHIP project aimed for integration with a
number of OMII projects. In this context, Mr
Harrison attended an initial meeting including four
OMII-commissioned software projects — Mr
Harrison was representing WHIP — dealing with
portal-based communications. The meeting was
chaired by Neil Chue Hong. WHIP’s integration with
OMII would also enable discussions between Taverna
and the Cardiff-based Triana workflow system. Mr
Harrison sees closer ties between the developers of
these projects as the primary route towards
addressing the issues of workflow standardisation.
This is a bottom-up, application-centric approach, as
opposed to a top-down approach. Systems such as
Triana, Taverna and Kepler each had strengths and
weaknesses stemming from idiosyncrasies that had
developed out of their history and the problems they
had been addressing. Building more flexible,
applicable and usable workflow systems needed to
take these idiosyncrasies into account. In Mr
Harrison’s opinion, developing closer links between
the developers of these systems was the best way of
achieving this.
Summary
In summary, OGF 20 was highly fruitful for Mr
Harrison. It helped him understand what workflow
standardisation means and how it could best be
achieved. Mr Harrison believed the issue required a
bottom-up approach, working with existing systems
and their idiosyncrasies. Furthermore, users should
have a choice of tools at their disposal. The choice
might include a programming language, a workflow
representation and enactment engine, as some may
be suitable for certain situations but not for others.
As a programmer, Mr Harrison could choose a
language most suited to the problem at hand. This
flexibility should also be available to users who were
building and running workflows. Integration and
advances in current systems were most likely to take
hold through sharing experiences and code. Mr
Harrison hoped that the WFM-RG research
document on application scenarios, to be delivered at
OGF 21, would throw light on particular steps that
could be taken to this end.
3.13.2
OGF21
This report provides an overview of Mr Harrison’s
activities in research and working groups at OGF21
meeting. It focuses primarily on the WFM-RG session
and the broader work that is it triggering, as this
formed the basis of his GridNet2 application. Mr
Harrison participated in the following workshops:
•
Secretary and Presenter: Workflow sharing and
Interoperability – WFM-RG session
•
Participant: All the Web 2.0 Workshop sessions.
•
Participant: OGSA Workflow
•
Participant: GridNet2 workshop
Workflow Sharing and
Interoperability Session
Mr Harrison was secretary of the WFM-RG, and gave
a presentation in the session. The focus of the session
was sharing and interoperability. Speakers included
Ian Taylor (introduction), Matthew Shields (recap of
OGF20 WFM-RG session), Ewa Deelman (overview
and results of the NSF Workflow Interoperability
workshop), David de Roure (myExperiment), and t
others. Mr Harrison also gave a talk which focused on
embedding workflows into different environments,
and in particular how this can be achieved with
minimum disruption to existing systems. Mr
Harrison discussed RESTful approaches to this issue
and the benefits of such an approach. The session
was a success with around 40 participants and
provided a useful forum for exchanging ideas, and
getting feedback from the OGF community. The last
two OGF meetings, for which Mr Harrison has been
funded by GridNet2, have shown a marked increase in
the activity of WFM-RG and this was the objective of
his funding application. Activity in the WFM-RG was
complemented by related initiatives in the field,
including the NSF Workflow Interoperability
workshop, and the Workflows for e-Science proposal
being submitted to the e-Science networking call.
Particular activities that Mr Harrison was involved in
include collaborations based on the WHIP project
and approaches to interoperability through
embedding workflows, particularly work with the
Kepler workflow system and the P-Grade portal. A
starting point of these collaborations is arriving at
use cases for interoperability. The WFM-RG was
continuing work on these use cases with a view to
presenting them to the OGF community at OGF22.
These use cases would form the basis for developing
standardised interfaces between workflow systems.
Other Sessions
The Web 2.0 workshop sessions were particularly
interesting for Mr Harrison because part of the WHIP
project was investigating Web 2.0 architectures and
technologies for sharing and presenting workflows
through Web portals. Notable speakers included
Geoffrey Fox (Web 2.0 Grids and
Cyberinfrastructure), Savas Parastatidis (Web 2.0
infrastructure and applications) and Marlon Pierce
(Real-time Web 2.0: Evolution of Middleware for
Grid-based Instruments and Sensors).
Web 2.0 represents an interesting growth area for
Grid research and is proving to be a challenging and
sometimes disruptive influence on the community.
Mr Harrison believes this will enhance the debate
and quality of research emanating from the
community.
The OGSA workflow meeting was interesting. The
OGSA-WG was taking a flexible approach to
integrating workflow into the OGSA architecture,
beginning with a survey of capabilities of different
workflow systems. Mr Harrison planned to provide
details of the Triana workflow engine to the group.
The GridNet2 workshop allowed various delegates to
share their work in relation to GridNet2 and the Grid
community as a whole. It was hoped that this would
lead to a more cohesive view of the contributions
made by the institutions involved and the UK
e-Science community in general.
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3.13 Mr Andrew Harrison – Cardiff
Summary
OGF21 was very fruitful. The WFM-RG was gaining
momentum which was spilling into other projects
and proposals. Web 2.0 paradigms were affecting the
directions of research in the Grid community as a
whole, as well as Cardiff's contributions to the work
in the WFM-RG.
Mr Harrison requested funding for attendance at two
OGF meetings - Manchester and Seattle. His
GridNet2 funding covered about 80% of his expenses
to Seattle, and he drew on other funds to cover the
rest. While the progress over the last two OGF
meetings with regard to the WFM-RG was
significant, the results were still preliminary and
required further efforts to bring them to fruition.
3.13.3
OGF22
Requested Clarifications from
Application
In applying for GridNet2 funding for OGF22, Mr
Harrison was asked to clarify the following questions:
•
The project that funded Mr Harrison’s current
position had enough travel budget for one person
to a European destination.
•
•
•
This was disseminated to a variety of groups
including the WFM-RG and OGSA-WG. Some
responses were received promptly, and there were
still more responses arriving.
Workflow embedding - allowing workflows to run
within their own environment, but invoked from
another
•
Development of a meta language - allowing
different proprietary languages to be mapped to a
single standard one
•
Semantic annotation/description/classification particularly important for workflow sharing
The session was then opened for discussion, which
was very fruitful. Six participants offered their
services in helping to produce a document that would
build on the preliminary analysis of the
questionnaire. The aim of this document was to
provide a means of understanding the requirements
and challenges of the three approaches to
interoperability. The different approaches could lead
to different solutions, such as APIs and workflow
language specifications.
It was hoped that addressing the challenge on
different levels would result in greater uptake and
involvement from the community than a one-sizefits-all approach. Work on the document was begun.
Page 86
If integration with the OGSA workflow group was
an aim, as was mentioned, how would you go
about this?
Things had progressed somewhat. The OGSAWG workflow discussions were waiting on the
WFM-RG to produce some results in terms of
interoperability and sharing standards with the
aim of integrating these results. A member of
OGSA-WG had kindly agreed to contribute to the
WFM document.
The WFM-RG session was very well attended, with 34
registered participants. Ian Taylor presented an
overview of what the group had discussed in the
previous two OGF meetings.
•
What precisely was Mr Harrison’s intention to
achieve specifically at OGF22?
Mr Harrison and the WFM-RG specifically
wanted to move beyond the discussion phase on
workflow interoperability and sharing. The group
achieved this through gaining a commitment
from a number of members of the community
with wide-ranging specialisms and experiences to
contribute to a research document on the issues
of interoperability and sharing.
Workflow Sharing and
Interoperability Session
Then Mr Harrison presented a summary of the
results from the questionnaire. The feedback from
the questionnaire showed that there were a number
of projects that required interoperability and sharing.
The possible approaches to achieving these fell into
three main categories:
Were there any other sources of funding that
might enable participation beyond OGF22?
Mr Harrison aimed to use the travel funds
available from the current project to fund his
travel to OGF23.
This report provides an overview of developments in
the WFM-RG at OGF22.
The week before OGF22, Mr Harrison created an
online questionnaire in order to elicit opinions,
experiences and requirements from users, designers
and developers of workflow systems regarding
interoperability and sharing. See:
http://bender.astro.cf.ac.uk/wfmrg
Were there any other sources of funding?
•
What are the results that are preliminary?
The preliminary results are the dissemination of
WFM-RG strategy regarding interoperability and
sharing. The WFM-RG spent OGF20 and 21
discussing the possible approaches to
interoperability with members of the community.
Mr Harrison suggested that there was some
consensus, at least on the fact that there were
different mechanisms by which styles of
interoperability might be achieved. This was a
step forward from the view that only a wholesale
adoption of some specification (for example,
BPEL) was the way forward.
•
It would be helpful to have more detail about Mr
Harrison’s goals and the time frames required to
achieve them.
The WFM-RG achieved their goal for OGF22,
which was to get commitments from members of
the community to contribute to a document
setting out the possible routes to interoperability.
The group aimed to have this document
completed by OGF23 where they could present
the results. Building on top of this during the
following year, the WFM-RG hoped to achieve
some tangible guidelines for the community, as
well as examples of interoperability and sharing
between projects.
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.14 Mr Chris Higgins – Edinburgh
3.14
Mr Chris Higgins –
Edinburgh
Mr Chris Higgins is the Workgroup Leader, Products
and Services Development for EDINA at the
University of Edinburgh.
For a summary of Mr Higgins GridNet2 activities, see
section 2.14, Mr Chris Higgins – Edinburgh.
Mr Higgins was funded under GridNet2 from Dec
2005 to engage in activity which would develop
synergies between the e-Science/Grid and
Geographic Information (GI) communities.
This report complements the presentation that Mr
Higgins gave at the GridNet2 workshop at OGF21.
Copies of this presentation are available from:
http://wiki.cs.cf.ac.uk/twiki/bin/view/Sandbox/Ope
nGridForum21
Grid community could make highly useful
contributions in all of these areas.
3.14.1
EDINA had been a member of the OGC since 2000
and used GridNet2 resources to part-sponsor an OGC
Technical Committee meeting at the University of
Edinburgh during June 2006. For more details, see:
http://edina.ac.uk/ogcconference/
This meeting had several ramifications for the UK
academic sector and wider members of the geospatial
community, but in terms of the stated GridNet2
objectives, the following were probably the most
significant outcomes:
•
Mr Higgins used his GridNet2 funding to concentrate
on developing links and liaising between the two
main SDOs active in defining open interoperability
standards in the Grid and Geospatial communities,
respectively.
•
Open Grid Forum (OGF)
•
Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)
The OGC (http://www.opengeospatial.org/) is an
international industry consortium established in
1994. It consists of approximately 300
companies, government agencies and universities
participating in a consensus process to develop
publicly available interface specifications. OGC
specifications support interoperable solutions
that “geo-enable” the Web, wireless and locationbased services, and mainstream IT.
Grid-enabled Spatial Data
Infrastructure
A key concept necessary for understanding the
context of much of this liaison work was that of
Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI). In recent years,
SDI had become a principal driver in the
development of Geographic Information (GI)
standards and could assist in understanding where
the GI and Grid communities intersected. The
definition used by the Infrastructure for Spatial
Information in Europe (INSPIRE) directive (entered
into force May 2007) is as follows:
SDI encompasses the policies,
organisational remits, data,
technologies, standard delivery
mechanism and financial and human
resources necessary to ensure that
those working with spatial data,
whether at the global or local scale, are
not impeded in meeting their
objectives. (INSPIRE consultation
paper, 2003)
Significant resources were being channelled into SDI
development at the global, regional (European) and
national level. Major challenges included
interoperability, security and scalability, noting that
many geospatial operations were characterised by
being computationally intensive. It became apparent
throughout the duration of this initiative that the
OGC Committee Meeting
– June 06
An ad hoc Grid GIS meeting (also open to
non-members of the OGC) was held on 28th
June, with the following speakers:
•
Malcolm Atkinson (National e-Science
Centre) on GGF, OGSA, European Grid
activities, NeSC
•
Pier Giorgio Marchetti (European Space
Agency) on The Grid model in the ESA
Ground Segment: status and perspectives.
•
Andrew Woolf (NERC Data Grid) on
Wrappers, portlets, resource-orientation
and OGC in earth system Grids
•
Neil Chue-Hong (National e-Science Centre)
on Mapping OGC standards to OGSA-DAI:
approaches and issues
•
A lunch meeting was organised between senior
members of both communities to establish
grounds for a working relationship.
•
The GridNet2 logo was prominently displayed as
an event sponsor throughout the week.
The report from this meeting, presented at the
Technical Committee meeting plenary is available at:
http://edina.ac.uk/ogcconference/gridgis.html
3.14.2
GGF18
This was the first GGF meeting that Mr Higgins had
attended. Mr Higgins attended this meeting to
familiarise himself with the structure of the OGF and
with the full spectrum of Grid activities, and to
conduct in networking. Mr Higgins met with key
individuals in the Grid community, discussed the
OGF position in respect of geospatial information
and laid much of the foundation for the OGC OGF
workshop at OGF22. Mr Higgins attended a large
number of sessions, in particular:
•
Several sessions focusing on security
•
Earth Observation and Ground systems in
distributed environments
This session confirmed that the Grid community,
in respect of geospatial information, had focused
most of its attention to date on remote sensed
data. This was unsurprising as the volumes of
data generated were substantial and the
processing of such data was consequently
computationally intensive. This session also
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3 GridNet2 Reports
3.14 Mr Chris Higgins – Edinburgh
confirmed that there already was awareness of
the work of the OGC and that there was no formal
liaison to date. Importantly though, there was an
appetite for establishing a formal link.
Methodologies for Environmental Analysis
(IMAA)
The workshop concluded with a panel discussion.
Mr Higgins made key Grid contacts at this meeting,
and found it interesting to contrast the operation of
the OGF with the OGC. The OGF came across as a
larger organisation with a wider spread of members,
including many very big players. The gathering was
larger but less focused than within OGC.
Characterised by larger academic sector involvement
than OGC and much of the work discussed appeared
to be closer to the research rather than the
production end of the spectrum.
The following questions and issues were raised
during the presentations and discussion.
3.14.3
•
OGF20
•
An OGF-OGC workshop was held at OGF20. For
more details, see:
http://www.ogf.org/gf/event_schedule/index.php?id
=707
The stated purpose of this workshop was to “…plan
concrete collaboration between the Open Geospatial
Consortium (OGC) and the Open Grid Forum (OGF)
to identify and produce standard, Grid-enabled
geospatial information tools in the context of a
service-oriented architecture”. There were
presentations from key stakeholders and potential
adopters, followed by a panel session to get rough
consensus on specific activities, such as harmonising
the OGC Reference Model with emerging web
services. A Memorandum of Understanding between
OGC and OGF was also discussed.”
The event had three components. The first section
attempted to communicate to the Grid community
the breadth, applicability, maturity and uptake of the
open geospatial interoperability standards, noting
that the latter included standards from ISO TC/211 as
well OGC (these two organisations liaise very closely).
•
Introduction, Craig Lee, OGF Area Director, The
Aerospace Corporation
•
OGC/ISO TC211 Standards Landscape, David
Arctur, OGC Interoperability Institute
•
GEOSS (Global Earth Observation System of
Systems), Jeremy Morley, University College
London
•
United Nations Spatial Data Infrastructure
(UNSDI), Kristin Stock, University of
Nottingham, Social Change Online
The second section concentrated on projects that
were demonstrably bridging geospatial and Grid
standards communities:
•
•
•
•
There is a need to “migrate data”.
•
This could mean secure data transfer, thirdparty data transfer.
There is a need for "real-time data processing”.
•
Distributed resource mgmt, scheduling,
workflow management.
•
How does this relate to the WPS?
How well does SAW-GEO meet most needs?
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
OGC: Digital Rights Management, Info
Comm & Semantics groups?
•
OGF: Semantic Grid, Workflow Research
Groups?
Geospatial Interoperability
•
Data semantics, geo-service semantics,
ontologies.
•
How does this drive geo-workflow
capabilities?
Geospatial reasoning
SEE-GEO project, Chris Higgins, EDINA,
Edinburgh University
•
SAW-GEO project, Gobe Hobona, University
of Newcastle
Activities at George Mason University, Liping
Di, George Mason University
Cyclops/EGEE, Stefano Nativi, Italian National
Research Council (CNR), Institute of
Page 88
General-purpose inference engines, planning
agents?
Web 2.0 vs. traditional Grid tools
•
•
Dynamic service provisioning.
Which groups in the two organisations might
benefit from collaboration?
•
•
How well does GT4 serve SAW-GEO’s needs?
What does SAW-GEO need for wider
examination, adoption?
When would it be appropriate for geospatial
community?
Geo data virtualisation
•
“Recipes” for deriving data products from
raw data.
•
Support for file/data replicas.
Grid OGC Collision programme:
•
•
•
What does "Grid-enabling" OGC tools (WCS,
WMS, WCS...) mean?
HPC for geospatial data
•
Scalability?
Outcomes
The following outcomes resulted from the OGC
workshop discussions:
•
Start new Geospatial Community Group (CG) in
OGF.
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.14 Mr Chris Higgins – Edinburgh
•
•
This group would be the point of coordination for
further specific collaborative activities between
OGC and OGF, for example, interoperability
testing of OGC tools and data sets across Grid
infrastructures.
OGC-OGF Collaboration Workshop
Major issues:
In late 2007, the Open Geospatial Consortium and
the Open Grid Forum signed a Memorandum of
Understanding (MOU) on the topic of Grid-enabling
standard geospatial processing tools. That MOU
identified a set of possible technical topics to pursue.
The motivation for this workshop was to bring
together researchers and industrial practitioners
working on those topics, which are:
•
Handling massive data.
•
Need organisations that can provide compute
resources that can support the vast
interoperability requirements (for example,
TeraGrid, NaReGI, EGEE).
•
Develop joint interoperability specifications
for geospatial processing services, workflow,
and security.
Mr Higgins was co-organiser of the OGC-OGF
Collaboration Workshop, together with Craig A. Lee
and Satoshi Sekiguchi.
•
The initial CG deliverable is to be an OGF
Informational Document defining more specific
collaboration efforts and opportunities.
3.14.4
OGF21
This could include generic web services, Web 2.0
mash-ups, and also complete, distributed service
architectures with Grid security models.
•
Apart from attending the wide variety of sessions
covering a variety of subjects and further networking,
Mr Higgins’ two main reasons for attending this
event were:
http://wiki.cs.cf.ac.uk/twiki/bin/view/Sandbox/
OpenGridForum21
2. To participate in the OGC-OGF workshop, which
Mr Higgins assisted in arranging.
3.14.5
OGF22
Mr Higgins attended OGF22 to continue engagement
in activities which develop synergies between the
e-Science/Grid and Geographic Information (GI)
communities.
This report complements presentations given at the
OGC-OGF Collaboration workshop at OGF22. Copies
of these presentations are available from:
http://www.ogf.org/gf/event_schedule/index.php?e
vent_id=9
In brief, as planned, two EDINA staff (Mr Higgins
and Michael Koutroumpas) attended OGF22 and
attended a number of sessions, the most significant
being the all day OGC-OGF Collaboration workshop.
UK e-Science Ramifications from
OGF22
There was much discussion between UK and German
representatives both at the workshop and afterwards.
As a direct consequence of this workshop, plans were
advanced for a 3-4 month collaboration between the
UK SEEGEO and the German GDI-Grid projects. If
successful, the demonstrator created would show
geospatial resources being securely shared using
standards based approaches across national
e-infrastructures with consequences for both the
JISC and wider UK e-Science.
Integration of WPS with workflow management
tools.
Workflows could be managed by scripting
languages such as Swift, by compiled code such
as SAGA, or by workflow management engines
such as DAGMan, Pegasus, Kepler, Taverna, and
Triana, just to name a few.
1. To give a presentation at the GridNet2 session.
For more details, see:
Integration of OGC's Web Processing Service
(WPS) with a range of back-end processing
environments.
•
Integration of OGC Federated Catalogues / Data
Repositories with Grid data movement tools and
Grid security models.
Data consumed and produced by WPS calls might
come from and be returned to OGC Federated
Catalogues in a simple client-server fashion, but
secure, third-party transfers might also be
desirable.
These MOU items formed the point of departure.
The real goal of this workshop was to get motivated
people together, identify what people really need to
do, get efforts snowballing between meetings, and to
continuously engage key stakeholders and potential
adopters.
During the course of the workshop, Mr Higgins gave
a presentation on SEE-GEO.
This workshop was originally scheduled for two
sessions but the response to the call for participation
was so positive that a third session was added. The
overwhelming response was primarily to due the
number of on-going projects around Grids and
geospatial systems. Specifically, the number of Gridrelated WPS implementations was surprising.
Besides having a number of talks around Gridenabled OGC tools, there were also two talks
concerning the fifth OGC Web Services test bed
(OWS-5) and also OGC's approach to geospatial
metadata and cataloguing services.
The first session began with these two talks as a way
of getting OGF folks more exposed to OGC methods.
The OGC test bed efforts are an important
mechanism for driving the development of best
practices, standards and tools. Likewise, every
application domain was most likely to have developed
their own metadata schemas, ontologies and so on
that distributed infrastructures (like Grids) would
have to support. Clearly information registries and
discovery services for both geospatial data and
computing resources needed to co-exist and
cooperate.
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3 GridNet2 Reports
3.14 Mr Chris Higgins – Edinburgh
The last talk of the first session on 52º North WPS-G
was presented by Bastian Baranski of the Institute for
Geoinformatics at the University of Münster. WPS-G
features a pluggable framework that can support
different Grid middleware, has full GML2 support for
complex values, and supports both synchronous and
asynchronous processing. The current
implementation is UNICORE-based. WPS-G was
demonstrated with an avi screenshot movie.
•
The entire second session comprised a set of talks
from the GDI-Grid (Geodateninfrastrucktur-Grid)
project, part of the German D-Grid project. D-Grid
had the overall objective of producing a national Grid
infrastructure with support for three major Grid
middleware packages (UNICORE, gLite, and Globus)
and, even more importantly, a self-sustaining
business model. Hence, GDI-Grid had the same
objectives in the area of geospatial applications, such
as flood simulation, noise propagation, and
emergency routing. It was important to note that
while deeply entwined with D-Grid, this set of talks
was led by lat/lon (www.lat-lon.de), a small company
specializing in new technologies for distributed
geospatial data management and processing.
•
These talks looked at using WPS as a Grid front-end
with different translator services, design options for
chaining multiple WPS calls (for example, workflow),
and how to integrate Grid security mechanisms into
OGC tools, such as WPS, in a way that is still easy and
simple for non-Grid specialists to use. Continuing on
the topic of Grid security, the third session had a talk
by Higgins on SEE-GEO and the use of the
Shibboleth Grid security system to provide
authentication (single sign-on) and authorisation
(digital rights management).
A talk from ESRI (www.esri.com) was also originally
scheduled for the first session but this was cancelled
at the last minute and replaced by the talk from
Traverse Technologies. The third session originally
had a second talk from NASA Ames but this was
cancelled shortly before the workshop. Nonetheless,
the extensive discussion of these talks overflowed to
the point where there was only about 15 minutes of
remaining time for discussion at the end of the third
session.
The following are further references for the OGC Web
Processing Service (WPS):
•
52north.org/index.php?option=com_project
s&task=showProject&id=21&Itemid=127
•
Workshop Results and Future Work
As already indicated, there was a very high response
to the Call for Participation for this workshop and
there were more Grid-enabled implementations of
WPS than anticipated. This indicated a large interest
in and motivation for precisely for this kind of
tooling. This was surprising since geospatial data was
applicable across many different application
domains. A key challenge was how to hide the
complexity of Grids and to make the end-user tools as
easy to use as possible by non-specialists in
geospatially-related application domains. If WPS
became the accepted way (dominant practice) that
people in the OGC community used for their
distributed processing needs, then this might very
well be the way to enable that large community to
adopt Grid technology.
There were a number of follow-on action items from
this workshop:
•
OGF would set-up a project on GridForge where
anybody can get documents, browse the wiki and
so on, and people with a GridForge account could
post items to the project.
•
Relevant groups in OGF would be encouraged to
review the WPS 1.0 spec.
These groups included the HPCBP-WG, the
GRIDRPC-WG, and the SAGA WG, to better
determine the breadth of supportability with Grid
tooling.
•
OGC and OGF agreed to coordinate their
meetings being held June 2-6 in Europe. OGF23
was in Barcelona, Spain, while the OGC Technical
Committee meeting wase in Potsdam, Germany.
Videoconferencing was explored as an option,
along with coordinating the meeting schedules to
allow interested parties to travel between the two
cities. OGF23 was co-organised by OGF-Europe
and was expected to have workshops on digital
repositories, with participation by geospatialrelated projects such as DEGREE (www.eudegree.eu) and GENESI-DR (www.genesi-dr.eu).
Other candidate technical topics for this
coordinated meeting included security, workflow,
and programming models.
•
The European Geophysical Union planned to
have sessions on Earth & Space Science
Informatics with several sessions explicitly
covering Grids: ESSI8, ESSI9, and also ESSI10.
European partners in the OGC-OGF
collaboration might use this meeting as an
opportunity to make further progress.
Information for all ESSI sessions can be found at:
The Approved WPS Standard, V1.0
WPS references this standard: OGC 06-121r3,
OpenGIS® Web Services Common Specification
Example uses of WPS:
•
Discussions, findings, and use of WPS in
OWS-4
portal.opengeospatial.org/files/?artifact_id=
19424
•
OWS-4 Workflow report - use of WPS in
workflows
portal.opengeospatial.org/files/?artifact_id=
19778
•
Organisations that publicly announced WPS code
sets.
Page 90
PyWPS (Python Web Processing Service)
pywps.wald.intevation.org
www.opengeospatial.org/standards/common
•
lat lon
wiki.deegree.org/deegreeWiki/WebProcessin
gService
www.opengeospatial.org/standards/wps
•
52 North
http://www.cosis.net/members/meetings/progra
mme/session_programme.php?p_id=323&PHPS
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.15 Mr Neil Chue Hong – OMII-UK
ESSID=5c977de80d06eea2e1ac4f2c24f9ae2c&P
HPSESSID=5c977de80d06eea2e1ac4f2c24f9ae2c
•
•
•
•
•
•
Grids in the IT Data Centre
•
Town Hall
•
DAIS Working Group Session
•
OGSA-DAI Workshop
•
Standards All-Hands Meeting
•
caGrid 1.0 – Update on caGrid Infrastructure
Project
•
OGSA Data Architecture
•
Data Integration Solutions with OGSA-DAI
•
OMII-Europe
•
Data Area Meeting
•
SAGA Session
INFOD was also discussed as OGC was
examining event-based approaches, for example,
pub/sub. There was interest in reviewing an
INFOD presentation on sensors that could
benefit from using OGC Sensor Web Enablement
standards.
•
OGC/OGF Collaboration Workshop (2 sessions)
•
Software Providers meet GIN and Standards
•
OMII-UK: Reducing the gap between
researchers and resources (2 sessions)
Vladimir Getov (Westminster, UK), one of the
editors for IEEE Computer, invited OGC and
OGF to co-author a paper on this collaboration,
to be targeted for the November 2008 issue, just
in time for SC08.
Relevance
OGC and OGF would explore possibilities for
concrete engagement in OWS-6 that was in the
planning process.
As a result of this workshop at OGF22, the
German GDI-Grid and UK SEE-GEO projects
held discussions about further collaborations.
Both projects were examining issues relating to
providing access to geospatial information on
national Grid infrastructures and there was
significant overlap, particularly in the area of
security.
Virtualisation was mentioned several times in the
workshop and OGC had a sidebar discussion
about the implementation of virtualisation in the
GEO-Grid project (AIST, Japan). This was an
opportunity as OGC is leading a related task in
GEO.
3.15
Mr Neil Chue Hong –
OMII-UK
Mr Neil Chue Hong was appointed director of
OMII-UK after the departure of Dr Steven Newhouse.
Mr Chue Hong inherited Dr Newhouse’s GridNet2
award, which he used to fund OMII-UK attendance at
OGF meetings, in keeping with the original purpose
of the award.
For a summary of Mr Chue Hong’s GridNet2 activites,
see section 2.15, Mr Neil Chue Hong – OMII-UK.
3.15.1
OGF21
Mr Chue Hong attended OGF21 in Seattle and this
report describes the relevance of the trip to current
OMII-UK and UK e-Science activities.
Mr Chue Hong attended the following meetings:
•
Opening Session
•
OGSA-ByteIO Interoperability Fiesta results
•
Web 2.0 Grids and Cyberinfrastructure
•
Real-time Web 2.0: Evolution of Middleware for
Grid-based Instruments and Sensors
•
ByteIO Experience Document compilation
•
OGF Marketing Workshop
•
Keynote: Think Little: The Proliferation of Small
Clusters Means Big Changes
•
Standard API for Data Grids
Mr Chue Hong was primarily interested in the
application of standards to the creation of
sustainable, interoperable implementations of
software of use to researchers. In particular, he
contributed directly to many of the data area
standards groups.
Mr Chue Hong co-chaired the ByteIO-WG, and this
was a significant OGF for that group, because they
presented the results of the ByteIO Interoperation
Fiesta, which compared the four implementations of
the standard. The group also started work on the
experiences document.
Mr Chue Hong attended a number of sessions
concerned with interoperability which featured
software which had been developed or sponsored by
OMII-UK. He also participated in a panel Software
Providers meet GIN and Standards on this subject.
Mr Chue Hong participated in a number of the
discussions in the more mature working groups to
understand the current status of the specifications
and their routes to adoption, for instance through
OMII-UK software – this included DAIS-WG, and
SAGA-WG, as well as the work done through OMIIEurope.
Mr Chue Hong chaired the OMII-UK workshop,
which had a good attendance comprising
appoximately 25% of the total OGF attendees. There
were demonstrations of a number of the software
components developed by OMII-UK and their
relevance to the OGF community. This was a good
opportunity for OMII-UK to obtain better feedback,
and it also improved the visibility of OMII-UK’s work
and the UK e-Science projects associated with this
work.
Mr Chue Hong participated in the OGF/OGC
Collision workshop, which featured work done by
OMII-UK in the UK with EDINA, Leeds and
Manchester as part of the SEE-GEO project. It also
featured work being done using OGSA-DAI, an OMII-
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3 GridNet2 Reports
3.16 Dr Richard Hughes-Jones – Manchester
UK software component, in the GeoGRID project led
by AIST in Japan.
draft, and Mr Chue Hong solicited comments on the
document from a number of other OGF WG chairs.
Mr Chue Hong had a number of discussions with
different OGF attendees about OMII-UK and their
efforts to deliver and support software communities.
Mr Chue Hong also talked to people working on
UNICORE and Globus, and continued discussions
about the OMII-UK/caBIG collaborations.
Mr Chue Hong attended a number of sessions
concerned with interoperability which featured
software which has been developed or sponsored by
OMII-UK. Mr Chue Hong pressed for prioritising
available effort on getting interoperability at the
critical points for allowing people to migrate between
different infrastructures.
As NomCom Chair, Mr Chue Hong attempted to
solicit volunteers for the community led nominations
process. He participated in the Marketing workshop
to give a UK perspective.
Overall, by being able to attend OGF21, Mr Chue
Hong was able to promote a lot of the standards and
e-Science related work that OMII-UK are doing or
sponsoring. He was also able to get a good
perspective of what work, particularly in standards,
would be relevant for UK e-Science software, and
thus for OMII-UK.
3.15.2
OGF22
Mr Chue Hong attended OGF22, and participated in
the following sessions:
•
Opening Session
•
OGF Marketing Workshop
•
OMII-Europe: Using open standards to deliver
interoperability
•
OGSA-DMI Discussion of Specification
•
OGSA-Data Architecture Future Directions
•
Authz Interoperation Demonstrations
•
Activity instance document schema
•
HPCP Specification Adoption
•
Grid Interoperation Now: Specification
Adoptions & Discussions
•
SAGA: The Simple API for Grid Applications
•
SAGA + DAIS: next steps
•
Creating a standard software API for Data Grid
Management Systems BoF
•
The Encyclopedia of Life: A Web page for every
species
•
Financial Services workshop
•
DAIS-WG Session
•
Data Management Workshop
Relevance
Mr Chue Hong was primarily interested in the
application of standards to the creation of
sustainable, interoperable implementations of
software of use to researchers. In particular, he
contributed directly to many of the data area
standards groups.
Mr Chue Hong was co-chair of the OGSA-ByteIO WG
which did not have a session at this OGF, but which
came up in the context of many discussions. The
OGSA-ByteIO-WG had an experiences document in
Page 92
Mr Chue Hong participated in a number of the
discussions in the more mature working groups to
understand the current status of the specifications
and their routes to adoption, for instance through
OMII-UK software. The groups included DAIS,
SAGA, and Authz.
Mr Chue Hong had several discussions with
Shantenu Jha and Andre Merzky of SAGA about
socialising and promoting their work, and how to tie
it into the data access and data transfer specs.
Although unable to attend the WFM-WG, Mr Chue
Hong had discussions with Ian Taylor and
contributed input based on the experiences of OMIIUK collaborators and users. Likewise, though he was
unable to attend the OGC-OGF collision workshop, to
which he has contributed at past OGFs, Mr Chue
Hong had a discussion with one of the OGC-OGF cochairs about its status and how OMII-UK can
continue contributing.
Mr Chue Hong had a number of discussions with
different OGF attendees about OMII-UK and their
efforts to deliver and support software communities.
He also talked to people working on UNICORE and
Globus, and continued discussions about the OMIIUK/caBIG collaborations.
As NomCom Chair, Mr Chue Hong had discussions
about raising the grassroots involvement in the
steering and coordination of OGF. He also had
discussions about strategies for improving the
feedback cycle between the standards and e-Science
councils, and continued his participation in the OGF
Marketing group.
Overall, by being able to attend OGF22, Mr Chue
Hong was able to efficiently discuss a number of
collaborations and generate new work because of the
critical mass of people attending. He was also able to
get a good perspective of what work, particularly in
standards, will be relevant for UK e-Science software,
and thus for OMII-UK.
3.16
Dr Richard HughesJones – Manchester
Dr Richard Hughes-Jones is the Senior Experimental
Officer in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the
University of Manchester.
For a summary of Dr Hughes-Jones’ GridNet2
activities, see section 2.16, Dr Richard Hughes-Jones
– Manchester.
3.16.1
GGF15
The main focus for Dr Hughes-Jones at GGF15 was
the NM-WG. Dr Hughes-Jones was one of the cochairs at GGF15, and so organised a full day working
meeting, an open meeting and a tutorial on Web
Services for NM Applications. The attendance at the
meetings was good with 10 – 15 people at each
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.16 Dr Richard Hughes-Jones – Manchester
session, and many of these were NM-WG “core”
people.
NM-WG Sessions
•
IPv6 and multicast
•
Validation Authority for Schemata
It was agreed to publicise a set of valid schemata
for tools in current use. This would be ranked by
number of users. It needed to allow extensibility,
because there would be new schemata as new
tools develop.
Presentations
Jason Zurawski presented the current status of the
V2 schemas, which are available as a tarball on the
NM-WG web page. New items included:
European Update
•
IDs & IDrefs – allows to track state
•
Filtering
Mark Leese gave a presentation of the current status
of European NM projects.
•
Characteristics
Software Demonstrations
•
Parameter block
There were demonstrations for the following NM
software:
V2 Schemata Discussions
The following V2 schemata issues were discussed:
•
The item may be in the metadata section, but
then one would have to give all the metadata each
time any ONE item changes, which causes an
XML explosion problem.
There was also a need to be able to group
measurements together depending on other
things, such as the interface number and not just
the time.
•
perfSONAR – Jason Zurawski
Jason gave a demo of PerfSONAR. This was a
way to use the V2 schema to exchange historical
SNMP counter data. It was being tested in Dante
and Internet2 networks.
•
EGEE-JRA4 & European Update – Mark Leese
Subsequent Discussions
•
The session that was open to all was a summary
of Monday’s meetings regarding the group’s
progress and so on.
•
Web Services pseudo-tutorial: Web Services for
NM Applications
•
Need examples
•
Traceroute
Marlon Pierce started by giving an introduction
to Web Services and then described the following
in more detail:
•
Stats from an interface
•
WSDL 1.1 overview
Approaches actions:
•
SOAP 1.2 overview
•
Don’t normalise – just zip.
•
SOAP formats
•
Use of pre-defined format – and use this as a
handle.
•
Data encoding
•
Explore use of RDF to help this XML
explosion.
•
Message routing
•
Seek input from web service community for
transmission of repeated metadata.
Units
Jason led this discussion. SI units were agreed. A
discussion took place about how to express units
values and it was agreed there should be a units
attribute.
•
Performance Advisor – John Estabrook
Schema normalisation
Jeff Boot led the discussion. There may be groups
of related items and only one or two things
change, such as a lot of data with same
characteristic, and only the time changes.
•
•
Response Codes
The current thinking was covered in the slides for
this meeting. The NM-WG planned to ask the
people involved in WS. It would be clearer if
<characteristic> was replaced by
<response>. If care was taken with choosing
the namespaces URI, it should be able to be
mapped onto URLs which could be useful for the
future.
Shrideep Pallickara then gave a presentation and
led the discussion on advanced capabilities of
Web Services including:
•
Addressing
•
Eventing
•
Reliability
In summary, at this GGF meeting, the NM-WG made
significant progress in discussing and resolving many
of the technical issues involving the Version 2
NM-WG schemata that had been brought up on the
mailing list and phone calls.
Dr Hughes-Jones believes the presentations on WS
clarified many issues and helped the group.
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3.16 Dr Richard Hughes-Jones – Manchester
3.16.2
OGF19
Dr Hughes-Jones attended various working group
and research group sessions at OGF19, and also went
to the OGF town hall meeting.
Astronomy Applications Group
Discussions
Network Measurement Working
Group Sessions
Dr Hughes-Jones chaired all the NM-WG sessions at
OGF19.
An immediate aim was to contact other OGF working
groups to ascertain whether the needs of Astronomy
analysis were being catered for by the Grid
community.
The first session included a summary of the OGF.23
Draft Standard and a review of the current position of
the version 2 Schemata. It was agreed to progress a
draft standard document on the version 2 Schemata,
check for any minor updates to the OGF.23 Draft
Standard, and then produce an OGF Experimental
document to move OGF.23 to a standard.
The Astro RG has created a requirements document
(OGF informational document).
The second session worked on the document for the
version 2 Schemata.
The needs of the Astro RG included focus on using
specialised “workbench” (portal) techniques to
perform global searches of their data archives for sky
images. Unlike particle physics, the astronomers did
not tend to write analysis programs or code for a
given investigation.
Grids and System Virtualisation
Group
In response to a question, the group was not (yet)
considering the needs of Radio Astronomy, which
was using 512 Mbit/s real-time data flows from the
telescopes to the correlator, and researching how to
make use of Grid farms for distributed correlation.
Storage Networking Community
Group
After the meeting, Dr Hughes-Jones had discussions
with the co-chair about participation in the e-Science
stands planned for OGF20 in Manchester.
OGF Opening Tuesday 30 Jan
It was interesting to note the emphasis on tangible
deliverables and the emphasis on producing draft
standards. It was also good to see the improving
alignment of academic and industrial/commercial
interests.
Firewall Issues Research Group
The FI-RG meeting was a very good meeting with
many informative presentations. The different
firewall techniques were presented and discussed in
detail. The focus was on the security of setting up
switched Lambdas or Lightpaths between computing
sites/hosts. For example, if user A was correctly
authenticated by the middleware and set up a
Lightpath between two sites, how was user B, who
was not allowed to use this link, prevented from
making use of the Lightpath? This was very relevant
to the current Remote Farm work by the ATLAS
Trigger/DAQ group and others.
Particle and Nuclear Physics
Applications
There was a good discussion of needs and issues,
during which it was suggested that contact with the
Astronomy Applications Group would be beneficial.
Infrastructure Area Meeting
This was a small meeting. It reviewed the current
work of this area and discussed whether investigation
of other infrastructure items like storage would be
useful.
It appears that the groups currently in the
Infrastructure Area are progressing well. It was
agreed to continue examining other areas that might
be included in the infrastructure area.
Page 94
This group will examine the OGF work to see if the
use of virtual machines and systems needs extra
support of features to operate in the Grid.
There was a presentation of the proposed work on
storage management in the Grid from two storage
vendors. They focused on commercial data centres,
but the issues and requirements seemed very similar
to the work that has been going on in the academic
community Grids and in the OGF Standards Council.
There seemed to be no plan to create use-case
requirements or best practice documents but rather
to ask the group to produce “code” to solve the
perceived problems in commercial data centres.
Grid High Performance Networking
Meeting
There were several presentations on different
techniques being investigated for network resource
management and Lightpath or link reservation. There
were questions and discussion of the issues of
interoperation between different Grids when
considering network resource management.
There was also much discussion on the new draft of
the Grid User Network Interface document, which
seems to be making progress.
3.16.3
OGF20
Dr Hughes-Jones was very impressed by the
knowledge and enthusiasm of the young members of
EGEE who manned the stands in Manchester
Central. In spite of the expense, he thought it was an
opportunity well taken to put the European and UK
e-Science work on view to the world Grid community.
Dr Hughes-Jones attended various sessions at
OGF20.
GFSG
Dr Hughes-Jones attended his first steering group
meeting as Area Director for Infrastructure held on
Sunday afternoon 6th May.
Infrastructure Area Meeting
The meeting was held at 14:00 on Monday 7th May.
As AD, Dr Hughes-Jones co-chaired this small
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.16 Dr Richard Hughes-Jones – Manchester
meeting with Franco Travostino. The purpose of this
meeting was to review the groups currently in the
Infrastructure Area to determine progress, concerns
and potential problems. The groups reviewed were:
•
Grid High-Performance Networking RG
(GHPN-RG)
•
Network Mark-up Language WG (NML-WG)
•
Network Measurements WG (NM-WG)
•
Grid and Virtualization WG (GRIDVIRT-WG)
Grids and System Virtualisation
Group
It was agreed that NM-WG and NML-WG would
work on a method to translate between the existing
network description schemata.
EU Keynote Presentation
Mario Campolargo gave a very useful update and
forward look at the EU PF7 calls and road map.
Firewall Issues Research Group
The RG documents were discussed; the first is
already provided as GFD-I083 and it was proposed to
merge the other two that are in preparation into one
document. Initial thoughts on the future of the RG
were discussed.
The meeting was held at 18:00 on Monday 7th May.
This was the second meeting of the WG and the two
co-chairs gave presentations that covered the
following:
Grid High Performance Networking
Meeting
•
Ideas for use cases
•
Update on GUNI (Georgios Zervas)
•
Concept of a virtual workspace
•
•
Management of virtual machines in a Grid
infrastructure
Enlightened Computing Update: An HD-class
example (Jon MacLaren)
•
SIP protocol for Grid Networks (Aldo Campi)
GridHypervisor project
•
Research Challenges for Optical Grid Networks
(Marc De Leenheer)
•
Introducing EC-GIN: Europe-China Grid
InterNetworking (Sven Hessler)
•
OGF Opening & Keynote
The keynote speech for OGF20 was given by Tony
Hey on The Social Grid and examined the challenges
in defining standards to make Grids interoperable.
The presentations at this meeting covered:
GridNet2 Meeting
Network Measurement Working
Group Sessions
Dr Hughes-Jones attended the GridNet2 Advisory
Board meeting at the University of Manchester.
Mark Leese & Dr Hughes-Jones co-chaired all the
NM-WG sessions at OGF 20.
3.16.4
The first session presented updates on the NM-WG
work and Alexander Ploss from Muster University
gave a talk on Network and Runtime Monitoring in
the edutain@grid SOA.
The other sessions continued work on the document
for the version 2 schemata.
Network Markup Language Working
Group.
The NML-WG meeting covered input for the
informational document in the following
presentations:
•
Introduction to NDL, the Network Description
Language from Amsterdam
•
Schema of the Network Measurements WG
showing the need for network description
•
Model vs. Syntax and a review of the draft
document on XML vs. RDF
•
Vision of RDF descriptions of Grid resources,
such as databases, files, network, CPUs,
visualisation, and so on
There was an invitation to everyone to provide
requirements for the schemas.
OGF21
Dr Hughes-Jones attended various meetings,
working group and research group sessions at
OGF21.
GFSG
Craig Lee of The Aerospace Corporation introduced
himself as the new OGF President and outlined a
road map of future directions for OGF. The items
presented in the opening meeting and at the Town
Hall Meeting were discussed.
The meeting continued in break-out sessions. Chris
Smith led discussion in the Standards Function. One
of the main issues was to set up a process to review
the health and activity of all the working and research
groups in the Standards Function. This was to
include:
•
Emphasis on use of the OGF mailing lists
•
Updating the living charter so that the work was
relevant to Grids & OGF
•
Focusing the work on the charter
•
Ensuring that the documents were produced
There was a proposal to remove the research groups
from the Standards Function. While some research
groups may have finished their work; for others, this
was not a problem and did not need to be fixed.
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3.17 Dr Jens Jensen – STFC
OGF Opening
Craig Lee introduced himself as the new OGF
president and gave a very clear road map of future
directions for OGF. He outlined OGF's goal to build
participation in the research/academic community
by:
•
Promoting peer-reviewed publications related to
OGF work
•
Co-locating future OGF events with established
research Grid conferences
•
Collaborating closely with other research
organisations such as the Open Geospatial
Consortium
•
Grid High-Performance Networking RG
(GHPN-RG) status is green.
•
Network Mark-up Language Working Group
(NML-WG) status is green.
•
Network Measurements Working Group
(NM-WG) status is green.
•
Grid and Virtualization Working Group
(GRIDVIRT-WG) status is red/orange
(see above).
Franco, the other AD, was to shepherd the
GRIDVIRT-WG.
Standards All Hands Meeting
Network Mark-up Language Working
Group.
Chris Smith led the discussion of the work in the
Standards Function.
The NML-WG held two sessions at OGF21.
Grid High Performance Networking
Meeting
•
At session 1, there were presentations describing
current work being done on network modelling.
This will act as input for the first deliverable,
which is an OGF informational document
describing the context of the NML work.
•
At session 2, the discussion focused on the issues
that should be included in the first schema.
Network Measurements Working
Group
Dr Hughes-Jones chaired all three sessions of the
NM-WG. The first session covered status and update
reports. Mark Leese from joined by telephone and
gave an update of what was happening in Europe
with EGEE-II and in the UK with Gridmon that
monitors the networks used by the UK e-Science and
Particle Physics communities. Hughes-Jones
presented the work done by the GEANT2 JRA in
extending the schemata to include end2end status
information about LightPaths.
The other two sessions were spent in detailed
discussion of the Draft Recommendation Document
specifying the schemata.
It is worth noting that the work of this group has
been taken up by 29 networks world wide – one of
OGF’s successes.
Grids and System Virtualisation
Group
Both co-chairs of this group attended the session by
telephone, and their presentations seemed more like
an introduction, rather than proposals for interfaces
in virtual machines or system virtualisation concepts
that could be standardised by an OGF WG.
The co-chairs are active but there are few members of
the working group.
Infrastructure Area Meeting
As AD, Dr Hughes-Jones chaired this small meeting.
After communicating the operational suggestions
from the GFSG, the meeting reviewed the groups
currently in the Infrastructure Area to determine
progress, concerns and potential problems. The
groups and status are:
Page 96
This meeting was chaired by Cees de Laat. There was
a review of all the documents from the group, and all
seem to be making progress.
There were presentations on the following:
•
Status of GNI
•
Progress on Network Research
•
Report from the GLIF meeting
Firewall Issues Research Group
After some presentations on the current work, there
was discussion on whether to put the RG on hold and
form a working group to start on a specification/work
around the "virtualisation" of firewalls.
GridNet2 e-Science Workshop
Members of the UK presented summaries of their
work on Grid issues and at OGF. Dr Hughes-Jones
gave a talk on the work being done on networking by
the WG and RG in the Infrastructure area.
3.17
Dr Jens Jensen –
STFC
Dr Jens Jensen works in Data Services at the STFC’s
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.
For a summary of Dr Jensen’s GridNet2 activities, see
section 2.17, Dr Jens Jensen – STFC.
3.17.1
OGF22
Dr Jensen had three main purposes for attending
OGF22:
1. To represent the Storage Resource Manager
(SRM) protocol collaboration (GSM-WG), as
chair, to advance the protocol as an OGF
standard.
2. To present advances and issues regarding
operations of Grid Certification Authorities (CAs)
in the CAOPS-WG.
3. To propose new standards for CA operations, in
the International Grid Trust Federation (IGTF).
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.17 Dr Jens Jensen – STFC
The IGTF defines standards and minimal
requirements for Grid CAs, but also meets in
CAOPS-WG even if it doesn’t cover operational
issues.
GSM-WG
storage systems from the Grid but still permitted
extremely efficient access to them. He also included
an overview of how the SRM met biomedical use
cases in EGEE. Finally, Dr Jensen briefly discussed
seven areas of particular challenges facing the SRM
protocol.
Dr Jensen chaired the two Grid Storage Management
(GSM-WG) sessions. The aim of these sessions was
to review the current SRM version 2.2 specification,
which is the current OGF standard. The problem was
there were six interoperating implementations (with
a seventh on the way, see GIN below), which have all
been implemented and have had interoperations
issues resolved since the document was written. As
with any standard, the process of implementing it
highlighted areas where the specification was not
sufficiently precise. Moreover, one of the major
customers, the Worldwide Large Hadron Collider
Computing Grid (WLCG) imposed requirements
upon the implementers which deviated significantly
from the original specification. Thus, anyone
following the specification as-is would not be able to
interoperate.
The slides are available at the following location,
although they are designed to accompany the talk,
not stand alone:
Since Dr Jensen was leading this effort, he gave the
only presentation in this session, but there were high
quality discussions (mostly technical) with members
of the audience. Dr Jensen’s talk, however, contained
input from at least three of the six implementers, as
well as issues from the WLCG deployment, so Dr
Jensen was not just speaking for himself.
CAOPS-WG
There were about a dozen people present, slightly
different people between the two sessions. For the
benefit of newcomers, Dr Jensen gave a 20-30 min
introduction to SRM, which was an abridged version
of his talk for the data management track (see below).
Then Dr Jensen went on to the technical talk,
highlighting issues with 2.2 and discussing options
for further progress with members of the audience. It
was intentional to keep this session technical to
ensure that the standardisation discussion is open,
but also because other data management or storage
groups may benefit from the technical issues which
concern GSM-WG. Although the talks were
advertised as two independent talks, Dr Jensen
ended up combining it into a single set of slides.
There were 30 slides (including the title) and they
took more than two hours to get through.
http://www.ogf.org/OGF22/materials/1143/datamg
mt.ppt
GSM-WG/GLUE-WG
Previously, Dr Jensen has contributed to the GLUE
1.3 and 2.0 work to help define the Storage Element
in the GLUE schema. Unfortunately the GLUE
Storage Element session clashed with a CAOPS
session in which Dr Jensen was speaking, and the
GLUE people were unable to reschedule, so apart
from minor discussions in the coffee breaks, Dr
Jensen was not able to contribute.
In this CAOPS-WG session, which lasted a whole day
but also contained the IGTF sessions, Dr Jensen
presented the following talks:
•
This was a talk about protecting private keys for
X.509 certificates, particularly for services which
depend on the availability of certificates
themselves, such as VOMS services and CAs
themselves. The talk focused on the conflict
between having long-term recoverable copies
(curation) and having protected copies
(confidentiality). The aim of this talk was to
gather recommendations for CAs in particular to
do this. The talk contained technical
recommendations. During the talk, there were
suggestions from members of the audience which
added to the body of knowledge. The outcome of
this should be a recommendations document and
a small software repository.
•
http://www.ogf.org/OGF22/materials/1052/SRM22issues.ppt
The introductory talk was a subset of the talk Dr
Jensen gave in data management the following day:
http://www.ogf.org/OGF22/materials/1143/datamg
mt.ppt
The outcome of this should be a whole separate
document of recommendations.
Dr Jensen was asked by Erwin Laure to present data
management issues on behalf of GSM-WG in
Thursday’s data management track, which
unfortunately clashed with the CAOPS track. Dr
Jensen’s talk introduced the SRM protocol,
explaining briefly why it is different from the Storage
Resource Broker (SRB). In particular, Dr Jensen
emphasised the role of the Storage Element, and how
the SRM met the conflicting goals of protecting
Certificate renewal
The purpose of this talk was to ask whether
certificates can be renewed, which is where an
X.509 certificate is re-signed by a CA using the
existing key pair. This was useful only if clients
were able to keep their private keys and replace
the old certificate with a new one – a process
which was trivial for some types of clients, but in
other cases needed testing or even additional
tools to help the process. In this case, feedback
based on the combined experience of the
audience suggested that support for renewal is
well understood.
The technical talk is available here:
GSM-WG/Data Management
Private key protection
•
CP/CPS model template
In this talk, Dr Jensen presented the aims of a
working group which he is leading. The aim was
to shorten the process for accreditation for a new
CA wishing to become a member of the IGTF. In
turn, IGTF membership implied that the CA
would be trusted as a Grid CA by some of the
largest Grids in the world, such as WLCG,
OpenScienceGrid, EGEE, as well as most national
Grids, including TeraGrid and the NGS. The aim,
in brief, was to make it easier to write an IGTF-
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3.17 Dr Jens Jensen – STFC
compliant Certificate Policy and Certification
Practices Statement by introducing intelligent
re-use (as opposed to the current occasionally
non-intelligent copying and pasting from existing
CP/CPSs). Dr Jensen knew about work in
TAGPMA on providing guidelines, which was
helpful for the non-template parts, but he learned
at the OGF that NAREGI were also looking into
doing something along the line of what he wants
for templates.
IGTF
In these sessions, which identify minimal
requirements for Grid CAs, Dr Jensen gave the
following talks:
•
http://www.ogf.org/gf/event_schedule/index.ph
p?id=1062
http://www.ogf.org/gf/event_schedule/index.ph
p?id=1127
http://www.ogf.org/gf/event_schedule/index.ph
p?id=1129
Additional Notes
•
Dr Jensen was contacted by the chairs of Grid
Resource Allocation Agreement Protocol
(GRAAP-WG) and Alexander Papaspyrou from
TU Dortmund. They were interested in
scheduling storage resources. Dr Jensen
mentioned old discussions among GSM-WG
regarding scheduling networking resources
between Storage Elements for special transfers.
There may be opportunities for future
discussions and collaborations, and they had
already exchanged email following this contact.
•
Wearing an NGS hat, Dr Jensen needed to follow
up with NGS regarding resource usage records
for RUS-WG.
•
Still wearing the NGS hat, Dr Jensen talked to
D-Grid (FZK) about the JISC-funded SARoNGS
project and promised to send details. He also
discussed SARoNGS and existing input projects
with Professors David Chadwick (Kent) and
Richard Sinnott (Glasgow).
•
Dr Jensen contributed to Grid Interoperability
Now (GIN) activities (currently mainly GINDATA with recent demonstrations of SRM and
SRB interoperability). Dr Jensen promised in the
GIN session to review the updated version of a
paper for the special issue of J. Grid Comp.
Robot certificates
“Robots” are automated clients, software agents
which can act on behalf of a user but without
users being present. Examples include
monitoring systems which regularly run test jobs,
automated data movers, and portals which run
jobs on behalf of the user (that is, the user is
anonymised by the portal). The UK e-Science CA
was the first Grid CA to implement robots
(although this is not obvious as the software
doesn’t support it directly and the RAs have not
been trained to support it), at least outside the
US, and it aimed for a cautious implementation
(to avoid relying parties deciding they don’t trust
us), an implementation which was subsequently
copied by other CAs (so far, the Netherlands and
Italy, with Czech Republic to follow). However,
the UK e-Science implementation was
significantly different (that is, more “cautious”)
from what the Americans had implemented
trying to solve the same problems. This talk
aimed at presenting the (European)
implementations, which had also differed among
themselves in some respects, to see if a common
minimal requirements list for robots could be
found. Clearly existing implementations couldbe
documented – this talk does that – but
agreement was still some way off. The Americans
felt the European model is too cautious.
•
http://www.ogf.org/gf/event_schedule/index.ph
p?id=1056
Moreover, in GIN, it was announced that
OMII-Europe might be able to contribute effort –
“can take over some of the more tedious tasks” –
which would be most welcome. GIN also needed
to involve more production Grid people and
standards people.
Higher Level CAs
This wasn’t a talk, as such, but the session looked
at a document which Dr Jensen had written, but
with input already from several contributors.
The group previously identified a need for
requirements for CAs that were needed on the
Grid to build trust chains to a self-signed root CA,
but which would not issue certificates to people
or hosts. In this session, Dr Jensen quickly went
through version 0.3 of the document, which has
previously been discussed only in a narrower
group. The aim was to make it an IGTF standard
for all the Policy Management Authorities
(PMAs) in the world (these are the bodies which
review and accredit Grid CAs). Dr Jensen
explained some examples, and was actioned to
add the examples to the document (which he
hadn’t previously for lack of time) and circulate it
again.
This document is now available in GridForge,
under the CAOPS document repository.
The following sessions discussions are available
at:
Page 98
•
Dr Jensen talked to a few people about security
issues – in particular, authentication – in medical
research. Dr Jensen obtained some contacts for
people (also industry) with relevant experiences,
and some who were interested in my experiences.
He made additional notes where some talks (for
example, Catlett’s) had suggestions.
•
Four different Hardware Signing Module (HSM)
vendors were expected to attend the Thursday
morning CAOPS session, although,
unfortunately, one didn’t make it due to bad
weather at his airport.
This was relevant because many CAs use HSMs in
various forms, from the high-end, used by the UK
e-Science CA, to key protection tokens used in
some (not yet in production) NGS-specific
credential conversion CAs, which aim to broaden
the NGS user base by abstracting certificate
management away from the users. Also
(European) robots require hardware tokens. Dr
Jensen followed up with a major vendor of
tokens, who promised to find out from their UK
branch information regarding pricing for NGS
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.18 Dr Shantenu Jha – UCL
use as the token prices have been prohibitively
expensive in the past. Dr Jensen was later
contacted by their UK representative. The
Brazilian government HSM project (Kryptus) is
also interesting, as they would almost certainly be
cheaper than many existing vendors. Dr Jensen
knew about the project already but had an
opportunity to talk with their representative.
•
•
•
•
•
•
Dr Jensen managed to attend all three of
Reagan’s sessions, more by accident than design.
Catching up with Arun in the coffee break was
probably more useful, as Reagan mostly gives the
sales pitch. Nevertheless, since the UK has a
number of SRB services and a few proposed
iRODS projects, it was worth keeping track of the
developments, particularly the migration strategy
from SRB to iRODS. Dr Jensen did learn that
iRODS 1.0 had been released and managed to
download the source. Moreover, comparing
NARA’s work with “data Grids” to Dr Jensen’s in
curation and long term digital archiving was
fairly useful.
The number of projects using workflow engines,
in particular, Taverna, was increasing. This was
also the case for astronomy communities, for
whom Dr Jensen’s group provides storage
services, who are interested in interoperability.
For file management, a number of minor issues
cropped up which were worth keeping an eye on
(perhaps in GIN-DATA). In the Grid File System
(GFS-WG) session, this included creative uses of
the LFC file catalogue and comparing it to RNS,
and mounting the latter in Windows. There was
work being done to make RNS accessible from
gLite. There wasn’t much information about
storage in GFS this time.
Dr Jensen discussed access management again
with the TeraGrid folks (specifically NCSA and
NERSC via DoEScienceGrids). This was useful
for two reasons: firstly, because it is necessary for
TeraGrid to trust the UK e-Science CA for the
purposes of interoperation, and also because Dr
Jensen was looking at looser models of
authentication and assurance in the UK, and also
for the NGS. NCSA mentioned NanoHub had a
“peered hosts” use case fow which there was no
solution yet found (as the obvious solutions
would violate minimal requirements for
certificate management). The CMS experiment
(part of WLCG) had a similar problem (if Dr
Jensen understood the NanoHub problem
correctly) with PhEDEx/FTS services in the UK.
Dr Jensen missed the XAM part of the data
management session because he was giving talks
in CAOPS. It would have been useful because
(with his storage service provider hat) such
technology potentially could enable us to scale
storage services to the next level, for example, by
switching to object based storage (OSD). The idea
was that some complexity and functionality is
pushed down closer to the storage device,
enabling data servers to manage more systems.
XAM is the evolving standard access protocol for
this in SNIA.
project manager), and to prepare his
presentations.
•
On Friday, there was meant to be a GIN activity
meeting but nobody seemed to be around, Dr
Jensen took that day off (claiming no expenses),
spending the day at MIT with Marcel Kunze from
FZK (head of e-Science at IWR).
3.18
Dr Shantenu Jha –
UCL
Dr Shantenu Jha was a Visiting Fellow at the Centre
for Computational Science at UCL.
For a summary of Dr Jha’s GridNet2 activities, see
section 2.18, Dr Shantenu Jha – UCL.
3.18.1
GGF15
For Dr Jha, GGF15 was primarily about re-chartering
the SAGA-RG and working out the details of SAGARG spawning a SAGA WG. Both missions were
accomplished.
Technical details of the three SAGA-RG meetings are
available at:
•
Meeting No. 1:
http://www.ggf.org/mail archive/sagarg/2005/10/msg00001.html
•
Meeting No. 2:
http://www.ggf.org/mail archive/sagarg/2005/10/msg00008.html
•
Meeting No. 3:
http://www.ggf.org/mail archive/sagarg/2005/10/msg00009.html
The main accomplishments from the meetings were:
•
The final touches were added to the use case
document and it was submitted to the GGF
editorial pipeline.
For more details, see:
http://www.ggf.org/mail
archive/sagarg/2005/10/msg00006.html
•
There was a meeting of the SAGA officers with
the Grid Forum Steering Group to discuss “bit
flipping” and the alignment of SAGA with SOA in
general, and OGSA in particular. The notes for
the meeting about bit flipping are available at:
http://www.ggf.org/mail
archive/sagarg/2005/10/msg00017.html
•
There were many technical details and issues
discussed, and many of these issues were
resolved.
•
Dr Jha delivered a 10 minute update on SAGA at
the closing plenary.
Dr Jensen stayed Sunday night (that is, overnight
Sat-Sun) to reduce the cost of the flight by over
50%. Dr Jensen took advantage of this day, using
it to discuss storage and project management
with Patrick Fuhrmann from DESY (dCache
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3.18 Dr Shantenu Jha – UCL
3.18.2
GGF16
For Dr Jha, GGF16 was primarily about:
•
Finishing the re-chartering process by finalising
and passing the charter for the newly spawned
SAGA-CORE-WG.
•
Discussing the issue list for the SAGA Strawman
API.
•
Discussing the SAGA requirements document –
authored by Dr Jha and Andre Merzky
The technical details of the four SAGA-RG meetings
are available at:
•
http://www.ggf.org/mail archive/sagarg/2006/05/msg00023.html
•
•
Discussing issues of compatibility between
ongoing (nascent) implementations of SAGA. The
last SAGA-RG session was devoted to a
discussion of this important issue and brief
presentations by the 3 main implementation
groups.
Technical details of the four SAGA-RG meetings are
available at:
•
Meeting No. 1:
http://www.ggf.org/mail archive/sagarg/2006/02/msg00103.html
•
Meeting No. 2:
http://www.ggf.org/mail archive/sagarg/2006/02/msg00104.html
•
Meeting No. 3:
http://www.ggf.org/mail archive/sagarg/2006/02/msg00105.html
•
Meeting No. 4:
http://www.ggf.org/mail archive/sagarg/2006/02/msg00106.html
The other main details are as follows:
•
Discussions began about SAGA-RG and GridRPC
group coordination
•
Discussions began about GIN and SAGA
involvement.
•
Discussions began about SAGA-RG and GridCPR
and a timeline was set.
3.18.3
GGF17
For Dr Jha, GGF17 was primarily about working
through the crucial, but unspectacular and
unromantic, technical details.
Other important achievements in the immediate runup to GGF17 were the submission of the requirement
document to the editorial process and the publication
of the use case document as GFD.70. See:
http://www.ogf.org/documents/GFD.70.pdf
Page 100
Meeting No. 2:
http://www.ggf.org/mail archive/sagarg/2006/05/msg00024.html
•
The bulk of the work for the requirements
document was done at the design team meeting
at LSU in December 2005.
The requirements document had been circulated
on the SAGA-RG list and to the GGF roughly 15
days in advance; the public discussion was a
sanity check before completion and submission.
Meeting No. 1:
Meeting No. 3:
http://www.ggf.org/mail archive/sagarg/2006/05/msg00041.html
•
Meeting No. 4:
http://www.ggf.org/mail archive/sagarg/2006/05/msg00042.html
3.18.4
GGF18
At GGF18, the SAGA group had two sessions. Both of
these sessions included presentations to update the
group on technical developments on the API and
discussions. Although the sessions were primarily
concerned with the API, some specific use cases were
discussed as well as some outreach activity. In a way
GGF18 was a meeting where there was discussion of
the API as part of the process of converging towards a
stable uniform first release aimed for early 2007.
Dr Jha, as co-chair of the SAGA group, set the agenda
for and chaired both meetings, and moderated the
discussions.
For more details about the meetings, see:
http://www.ogf.org/pipermail/saga-rg/2006September/000888.html
3.18.5
LGC Workshop
The Lightweight Grid Computing (LGC) Workshop
took place at Castleton in the Peak District, UK, in
May 2006.
A description of the workshop is available at:
http://tyne.dl.ac.uk/GROWL/Lightweight.shtml
Dr Jha was asked to give a talk on SAGA and how it
might relate to middleware being developed in the
UK. The main aim of this workshop was to share
ideas on the middleware needed to provide users
(read applications) with lightweight access to Grid
resources. In a way, this was a functional level below
the level at which SAGA operates, but it was crucial
that middleware developers understood the kind of
abstractions and functionality required of
applications. Although this event was primarily a
SAGA dissemination event for the UK e-Science
community (of which Dr Jha anticipates a few more),
there was useful feedback from several
projects/groups to SAGA.
The single most important feedback for the SAGA-RG
was the need for programmatic interfaces for “client
toolkits which can provide very light-weight but
extensible access to Grid resources”, not to mention
job and resource management.
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.19 Mr Jipu Jiang – NeSC
3.18.6
SAGA Design and
Implementation Meeting
The SAGA Design and Implementation Meeting was
held January 2006.
Dr Jha met with Andre Merzky (Vrije University),
Harmut Kaiser (LSU), who were both also very active
in the SAGA group, to work primarily on
implementation discussion (progress and technical
issues) and complete a first draft of the SAGA
requirements document. This was an important goal
to achieve before the next GGF meeting, GGF16.
This was a meeting away from the glare and
distractions of the GGF, and it was held in a secluded
environment enabling the three attendees to focus on
the low-level details of the SAGA Strawman API
specifications, to clean up things, to create an issue
list and most importantly, prepare a draft of the
SAGA requirements document so it was ready for
distribution. The group was successful on all these
accounts.
3.18.7
ISSGC 07
This was the first and major effort at SAGA outreach.
With the final specification very close to submission
to the OGF Editorial and GFSG Board, the invitation
to speak at the International Summer School on Grid
Computing to about 80 enthusiastic students was a
good opportunity to “test” various aspects of the
specification. Additionally the ISSGC provided the
opportunity to discuss many aspects of SAGA with
Prof Miron Livny and others. This has led directly to
a project with him to investigate SAGA as a
programmatic interface to Condor system.
The talk and material presented are available at:
• http://www.iceageeu.org/issgc07/sessionDescription.cfm?id=132
3.19
Mr Jipu Jiang –
NeSC
Mr Jipu Jiang was funded by Professor Richard
Sinnott’s GridNet2 award. Mr Jipu Jiang is a Grid
engineer at NeSC at the University of Glasgow.
For a summary of Mr Jiang’s GridNet2 activities, see
section 2.19, Mr Jipu Jiang – NeSC.
3.19.1
GGF18
As a member of NeSC and researcher on the JISCfunded Glasgow implementation of Shibboleth
(GLASS) project, Mr Jiang attended the GGF18
conference held in Washington DC, US. Mr Jiang
attended the following sessions:
•
GGF18 Opening
•
Keynote: Vision for 21st Century Discovery
•
Shibboleth for Grids: Experiences and
Interoperability (all four sessions)
•
Security Talk Session
•
OGSA-Authz-WG
•
Education and Training Community Group
Workshop
•
GGF Closing
•
Storage Grids in Healthcare
•
Topics in Identity Management
GGF18 Meeting Details
Mr Jiang’s primary reason for attending GGF18 was
for the security-related work, particularly the
Shibboleth for Grids workshop, which lasted for two
days. Mr Jiang’s work in NeSC is mainly focused on
Grid security. The GLASS (GLASgow early Adoption
of Shibboleth) project, on which Mr Jiang was
working, was designed to explore and to implement
Shibboleth technologies in the University of Glasgow.
Updates since the Grid and Shib BoF at GGF16 in
Athens were presented at this workshop.
A talk was given by Prof Richard Sinnott on behalf of
NeSC to introduce the new work being done in both
GLASS and DyVOSE project for adopting Shibboleth
technology in the Grid environment. Through
attendance at this workshop, Mr Jiang gained a
better understanding of Shibboleth-related work
being done internationally, and related components,
such as new versions of Shibboleth.
Mr Jiang found that the most interesting talk in the
Shibboleth for Grid workshop was on the MAMS
project from Australia. The group have done a lot of
integration work between Shibboleth and the
GridSphere Portal framework. They now have a
whole set of tools running on the GridSphere portal
framework. Although not much of their work involves
Grid, they did some impressive explorations in portal
and Shibboleth integration. Mr Jiang believed that
future collaboration with them could greatly improve
the work done at the NeSC.
To expand and update his knowledge in the Grid
Security field, Mr Jiang attended the Security Talk
session held immediately after the fourth Shibboleth
for Grid workshop. The delegate, Blair Dillaway from
Microsoft, presented an XML-based Assertion
Language for security policies called SecPAL, and
gave an interesting demo after the talk.
Mr Jiang attended the Education and Training
Community Group Workshop. He expected that this
workshop would be of use in teaching the Advanced
MSc students, which is one of his duties in NeSC. As
one of the aims of the DyVOSE project, a Grid
Computing module was created to provide hands-on
Grid training to Advanced Computing Science MSc
students at the University of Glasgow. The methods
learned from the workshop would be very helpful in
delivering the course materials to the students.
Besides adopting Shibboleth to the University of
Glasgow, the GLASS project was also going to use this
technology to provide secure access to NHS
resources/data. Through collaboration with Glasgow
Southern General Hospital, a fine-grained portal is
planned to be built to provide access and usage of
data from brain trauma patients. To gain better
understanding about the Grid technologies in the
health domain, Mr Jiang attended the Storage Grids
in Healthcare session.
Mr Jiang went to the Topics in Identity Management
session in the last timeslot of the GGF18.
Understanding issues raised in identity management
from other people’s experiences was crucial to a
success adoption of Shibboleth to the unified account
management system in University of Glasgow.
Page 101
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.20 Dr Mike Jones – Manchester
To conclude, Mr Jiang found GGF18 to be a
wonderful and rewarding opportunity which allowed
him to present NeSC-related work and understand
other people’s work and experience at the same time.
Mr Jiang hoped to continue these efforts in the
future.
3.20
Dr Mike Jones –
Manchester
•
Work was in progress to shibbolise MyProxy and
allow it to run as an on-line CA.
•
Most projects were addressing the AA in the SOA
space.
Overall the UK was well represented, contributing
more than half of the presentations.
Dr Mike Jones is a Grid Support Engineer in the
Research Computing Services at the University of
Manchester.
In the GIN-CG meetings, volunteers were sought
from the different Grids. The NGS was put forward as
a contributor and Dr Jones was volunteered to
represent NGS on matters relating to Authentication
and Authorisation.
For a summary of Dr Jones’ GridNet2 activities, see
section 2.20, Dr Mike Jones – Manchester.
Dr Jones also participated in other sessions at
GGF16.
3.20.1
3.20.2
GGF16
GGF17
GGF16 Athens was Dr Jones’ first GGF meeting for
some time. His main purposes for attending this
meeting were as follows:
There were no sessions on Shibboleth and the Grid at
the GGF17. Dr Jones attended sessions focused on
authentication and authorisation.
•
Attending the GridShib Investigators meetings as
he is involved in a project to help the NGS to
leverage Shibboleth.
Dr Jones attended the following parallel sessions:
•
OGSA Authz New Protocols
•
Discussing field authentication authorisation
issues relating to NGS within the GIN-CG
sessions.
•
GT4 Status & Experiences, Applications and
Deployments
•
Security Area session
•
Re-engaging in the community
•
GIN Progress and Plans
•
FI-RG
•
CA-OPS Session
•
TeraGrid Security: Managing security across a
Grid
Dr Jones attended the following parallel sessions:
•
GIN Meetings
•
OGSA Authz
•
Grid and Shib: Investigators meetings
•
IGTF
•
CA-OPS – OCSP, Revocation of proxies,
Namespace constraints
•
Ad Hoc BoF on Grid applications of
virtualisation technologies
•
Interoperability Fests
•
Grid Authorization – Interoperability Here &
Now
This proved to be an interesting session,
especially the handling of the compromise on the
TeraGrid.
•
Workshop on Data Access and Integration
(tourism)
Most of Dr Jones’ contributions were outside the
scope of formal meetings at GGF17. Instead, he
participated in informal discussions and networking
on the topics of identity management and Grid
security.
Dr Jones also obtained information about the
following:
Dr Jones attended the FI-RG where he suggested the
addition of AccessGrid as an example of UDP and
multicast network traffic for the Firewall Issues
Document. He also asked for the document to include
the effects of source IP filtering and suggested that a
section on Network Address Translation be added to
highlight the plight of compute resources whose
batch nodes are either firewalls or not connected to
the WAN. All three suggestions were embraced and
published in GFD.83.
•
3.20.3
Dr Jones presented work on SHEBANGS and also the
integration of Shibboleth into GridSite at the Grid
and Shib meetings. SHEBANGS was well received,
although the general impression was that it was quite
complex due to the attempt to explain the technical
aspects of the architecture. Dr Jones followed this up
with those who raised questions during the meeting.
SAML 2.0 had new features such as Single
Logout, Attribute Encryption and the Enhanced
Client or Proxy.
•
A final release of Shibboleth 2.0 was expected by
the end of summer 2006.
•
Autograph provided dynamic configuration of
Shibboleth attribute release.
Page 102
GGF18
The main purpose of Dr Jones’ attendance at GGF18
was to attend the four Shibboleth and Grid
experiences workshops.
Dr Jones attended the following parallel sessions:
•
Shibboleth for Grids: Experiences and
Interoperability
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.20 Dr Mike Jones – Manchester
There was another long discussion about DN
namespaces and the decision to drop OCSP.
•
OGF101
•
CA-OPS
•
OGSA Authz WG
•
International Grid Trust Federation
•
FI-RG
At the LoA-RG, the group identified two documents
to be produced:
•
Aggregating Mobile Devices with Grids
•
•
Topics in Identity Management
A risk analysis in relation to LoA and use case
gathering in an e-Science context
•
A gap analysis of current LoA definitions versus
LoA requirements in e-Science/Grid context
•
Most of this GGF meeting was taken up by Shibboleth
activities. Dr Jones presented the current status of
SHEBANGS, highlighting the problems regarding
identity credential namespace, the method by which
the Levels of Assurance (LoA) are conveyed, and
some experiences with the configuration of
Shibboleth.
gLite
LoA-RG
The group also discussed various authentication
scenarios and identified the areas relevant to LoA.
The work on LoA was further propagated to the Grid
community through the circulation of the ES-LoA
questionnaire in various relevant sessions.
Of particular note were the developments of
Shibboleth 2.0 (still not released) which appeared to
remove the WAYF from the federation. Most of the
inner workings seemed to be majorly different to the
Shibboleth 1.3 architecture in order to embrace IdP
discovery and single sign-out. David Chadwick
presented what looks to be a useful policy editing
application that allows service providers to express
complex policies in natural language using XLST
transforms.
Outside of meetings, Dr Jones was involved in
various discussions. In particular, Dr Jones had a
discussion with David Groep, David Chadwick and
Frank Siebenlist, regarding current and future
authorisation mechanics in Globus based Grids,
which specifically covered the ability to include UID
and GID assertions in authorisation engines such as
LCMAPS and GUMS. Groep also highlighted issues
relating to the existence of GIDs and UIDs on back
end nodes.
Two documents were discussed at the CA-OPS
meeting:
Unfortunately, Dr Jones was unable to make it to the
WHISKY which was rescheduled.
•
Guidelines for Authentication Service Profiles for
Grids
3.20.5
•
Grid Certificate Profile
The main purpose of Dr Jones’ attendance at OGF21
was to participate in the LoA RG, and security
sessions in general.
There were long and quite heated discussions about
what a federation means within this group, identity
management groups, the wider Grid community and
the on-line community in general. The need for a
glossary document was suggested.
3.20.4
OGF20
The main purpose of Dr Jones’ attendance at OGF20
was to participate in the LoA BoF and to man the
NGS and Manchester booths.
Dr Jones attended the following parallel sessions:
OGF21
Dr Jones attended the following parallel sessions:
•
Web 2.0 – Grids sessions
•
OGSA Authz
•
Security Area Meeting
•
Standard API for Data Grids (GFS-WG)
•
Storage Resource Managers – practical
experiences (GSM-WG)
•
OGSA-Authz (OGSA-AUTHZ-WG)
•
Grids and Server Virtualization
•
LoA-RG
•
CAOPS Session (CAOPS-WG)
•
Joint Session on Information Modelling for
Computing Resources (GLUE-WG)
•
caGrid 1.0 Update on caGrid Infrastructure
Project
•
JSDL General (JSDL-WG)
•
SAGA – Software Solution Session
•
JSDL 1.0 Extensions (JSDL-WG).
•
IGTF Session (CAOPS-WG)
For Dr Jones, it was unfortunate that this session
was co-scheduled with the Workshop on
Heuristics for Implementing Semantic
Knowledge Yardsticks (WHISKY).
•
JSDL Working Session (JSDLWG)
•
FI-RG
•
LoA Session (LoA-RG)
•
GIN
•
Dynamic Service Level Agreements
•
CA-OPS Session (CAOPS-WG)
Due to session scheduling issues, Dr Jones was
unable to attend the GIN sessions and the majority of
the GridNet2 e-Science sessions.
Page 103
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.20 Dr Mike Jones – Manchester
OGSA Authz WG
Dr Jones and Richard Sinnott were the designated
note takers, and the notes are available here:
topic) about X.509 DNs and SOAs. Globus (WS) were
to implement signing policies at the beginning of
2008
In summary, the two existing specifications were
reviewed:
It was a surprise to Dr Jones that there were no
signing policy checks in GT4 WS. He thought that he
may have missed the details, but after a quick search
through GT4 Java code base, he found no signing
policy or EACL strings.
•
XACML Profile
FI-RG
The XACML Profile now has a good level of
uptake by middleware vendors.
The main thrust of this session was the proposal of a
group to take forward the idea of a web service
authorisation framework for the dynamic opening of
ports. Both Dr Jones and Richard Hughes-Jones
noted that there were similarities between current
SAML callout work from the authZ group that might
have a natural synergy to this.
http://forge.ogf.org/sf/go/doc14890
•
WS Trust Profile
Two new specifications were proposed:
•
•
SAML Attribute Retrieval Profile to cover the
query to VO's AAs for membership information
retrieval
SAML VO Attribute Profile to cover the VO,
Group and Role attributes
It was noted that the security documents were
generally one step ahead of implementations, which
was seen to be a good thing. However, this caused a
void in user community feedback, blamed in part on
the lack of research funding into this area. It was also
observed that, in general, the security documents
were now becoming too complex for general reading
(This would be OK if all applications, vendors, and
virtual organisations had their own security experts;
this might not be the case).
Security Area Meeting
Mike Jones (Microsoft namesake, not the subject of
this report) gave an interesting presentation on MS
CardSpace. It seems to have a nice GUI layer with
backend plug-ins into most authN/Z systems. There
was a promise of open standards and quite a few
similarities with other projects in the same space, for
example, Shibboleth and Autograph.
GSM-WG
This session was again a presentation-oriented
session rather than a dialogue with the community.
There appear to be 5 interoperating SRM
implementations:
LoA-RG
Dr Jones presented the findings from the recent JISC
funded ESLoA project. These were well received as
the foundations for the first document A Gap
Analysis of Current LoA Definitions versus LoA
Requirements in e-Science/Grid Context. Jones
stressed that although the community at large
seemed to identify LoA and risk-based access control
as a requirement, the community had responded in
such a way as to suggest that the topic was not well
understood; there was a chasm in understanding
between Grid and non-Grid subscription-based
services. The second document from this group A
Risk Analysis in Relation to LoA and Use Case
Gathering in an e-Science Context has yet to gain
traction, as the security modelling within e-Science
was not sufficient at this time to obtain a large
enough pool of use cases.
Dr Jones attended the other groups as a session
tourist.
3.20.6
OGF22
The main purpose of Dr Jones’ attendance at OGF22
was to participate in Security Area meetings, to
attend the RUS and UR WGs, and to attend the OGC
sessions.
Dr Jones attended the following parallel sessions:
•
RUS-WG
•
BeStMan
•
OGSA-Authz-WG
•
CASTOR
•
Security Area Meeting
•
DPM
•
Authz interoperation demos
•
dCache
•
OGC-OGF Collaboration workshops
•
StoRM
•
GSM-WG sessions
CAOPS-WG
•
UR-WG
The Grid Certificate Profile had now passed through
the public comments phase, the comments were to be
pushed to WG final call 06/11/07, and then the
document was to be passed onto the editorial
committee.
•
CAOPS – IGTF Workshops
The current version of the Audit Guidelines
document was presented, and a synergy was noted
between this document and the auditing processes
for the TAGPMA. Namespaces were discussed and
the usual suspects raised their concerns (favourite
Page 104
RUS-WG
Morris Riedel chaired the session and was happy to
see that NGS was represented. Before the session
started, Dr Jones and Riedel discussed why the NGS
had interest in this area, and it was well received that
NGS was using RUS as a component in its accounting
model. Dr Jones believed that the group wishes to
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.21 Mr Ian Kelley – Cardiff
maintain ties with the NGS to receive further
feedback. During the session, other RUS
implementations were discussed:
•
Unicore6.1 implementation
•
DGAS gLite Accounting System
•
SGAS Globus incubator project
All of these projects planned to have a release at the
end of February 2008. They were aware of the JISC
Accounting call and wished to form ties with any
activity funded in that area. Dr Jones gave a brief
description of how the RUS was implemented within
the NGS. There was further discussion regarding
RUS, the GLUE schema and the CIM.
OGSA-Authz-WG
(This includes the Authz Interoperation
Demonstrations.)
There was some discussion about the architecture
document and whether components needed to be
restated in the profile documents. The group was just
about ready to pass the Attribute Exchange Profile to
area directors. The XACML profile (only 7 pages) was
converging with that of EGEE/OGF's, but it was,
however, envisaged that they would not merge into
one document due to time constraints on the latter.
Worries about having two documents meant that the
group was relying on a good public comment phase.
The WSTrust document had only one
implementation so far, from David Chadwick's group.
There was a discussion about attribute and obligation
standards, an area where it might be difficult to reach
consensus.
Security Area Meeting
It was noted that there was no LoA RG meeting;
activity had slowed down. Dr Jones mentioned that
the Gap Analysis draft was removed from the
GridForge site, due to the document being not to the
LoA-RG Chair's preferred standard, and it was
removed at her request. Dr Jones pointed out that
there had been much work on revamping the
document and that he would ask for the document to
be put back on GridForge.
OGC-OGF
The OGC Workshop consisted of three meetings. Dr
Jones attended these meetings to identify whether
there were any crossovers between the SARoNGS
project and security-related access control to OGC
Web Service interfaces. There is an open source
community called Deegree (http://www.deegree.org)
that is providing OGC interfaces with an official OGC
reference implementation.
There was some interesting discussion about adding
Meta GeoData to XACML policies (gXACML?) for
access control. There was discussion about the
possible extension to OGSA-DAI to directly query
OGC Web Services and WPS using OGAS-DAI as a
toolkit.
Worries about the performance of OGSA-DAI were
raised and it was mentioned that later versions of the
middleware had improved performance significantly.
Interesting presentations from SEE-GEO, D-Grid and
EDINA led to further discussion on the formation of a
Virtual Organisation and further collaboration
between these 23 groups and the NGS.
GSM-WG
This group looked like it was becoming more
standards oriented. However, it was noted that
version 2 of the SRM specification was now out of
date compared to all implementations and that
anyone wishing to build an interoperable SRM had
better engage the community instead of reading the
developing specification. There was a large discussion
about what was meant by 'space'; it seemed that
different implementations dealt with space
differently and so the behaviour could be predicted.
UR-WG
This meeting was very poorly attended as there were
only five people, consisting of two chairs from this
group, two chairs from other groups and Dr Jones.
The group is looking for a new chair (from outside
UK). UR is published but had many known
shortcomings. For example, it was not good for noncomputational resources and it was unable to handle
aggregate usage well. Dr Jones pointed out that VO
membership was missing and that NGS was having to
add this into the resources extensions. It seemed this
was the only extensible part of the UR specification
v1.
There is a survey available at:
http://forge.ogf.org/short/urwg/
Dr Jones assured the group that NGS would be
feeding their experiences back through the survey.
There was a brief overview of the JISC-funded
Review of Grid Accounting & Usage report, followed
by a good discussion between the attendees about
how the Unicore and NGS systems worked. Future
work on the UR v2 was then discussed. It was
worrying about the level of complexity but perhaps
this was a requirement.
CAOPS-WG
This was an all day session. It started with
presentations from a number of HSM vendors. The
representative from Aladdin, who produce the
eToken, was questioned about the cost and openness
of the drivers. He mentioned that there was a new
driver released that unified the behaviour across
Linux, Windows and Mac. There was some scepticism
and it may only be the newer javacard versions of the
eToken that behave consistently, not the Siemens
version. Jensen presented the rest of the talks, of
which the one that was the most thought-provoking
was on Robot Certificates where a debate about
naming was entered into: Why must CN=Robot:...
and the answer was that this was due to the logging
facilities. One further interesting discussion came
from another talk: The opening of the IGTF OID
space for proxy certificates to contain host
information for debugging. Dr Jones mentioned that
this was a big missing part in the current Proxy
certificate security model, and would partly address
what to do if a machine in the field with valid proxy
certificate and keys was compromised.
3.21
Mr Ian Kelley –
Cardiff
Mr Ian Kelley is a PhD student in Distributed
Collaborative Computing at the School of Computer
Science, University of Cardiff.
For a summary of Mr Kelley’s GridNet2 activities, see
section 2.21, Mr Ian Kelley – Cardiff.
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3.21 Mr Ian Kelley – Cardiff
3.21.1
GGF18
Mr Kelley met with Michael Russell, the developer of
Grid-Sphere’s GridPortlets, at GGF18 and talked at
length with him about the proposal, and got his
support.
Russell explained in detail the current architecture of
his new Vine project that will replace GridPortlets,
and how it helps to solve some of the given problems.
Mr Kelley used this as an opportunity to give him the
ideas outlined in the proposal, and he seemed keen to
architect his new system to further support the
needed interoperability. Mr Kelley and Russell both
went to attend the scheduled GCE-RG meeting,
which was unfortunately cancelled but still on the
OGF agenda. However, they met a developer from
Indiana there, and had a good discussion with him,
which included these issues. Mr Kelley successfully
gained the support of other GridSphere developers at
SC06 (Novotny, Wehrens). OGF19 would be used to
further build up the community and promote the
issues and find adequate solutions.
3.21.2
OGF20
Sharing Workflows
Mr Kelley participated in the Sharing Workflows
session at OGF20.
Although the general session focused on the need for
sharing workflows for scientific applications, there
was a presentation for an OMII-UK portals project in
which Mr Kelley is involved. This is the WHIP
project.
The WHIP project is seeking to build standardised
portal mechanisms for accessing shared artefacts, or
digital objects, for example, workflow descriptions.
OGF could prove a very good forum to get more
involvement in this project from other communities,
especially other OMII-UK institutions, and make the
work more standardised and useful for external
projects. An overview of the WHIP project was
presented by Andrew Harrison (Cardiff University),
and discussions followed offline with other OMII-UK
groups to synchronise efforts on some projects and
make the different software interoperable.
Other presentations that are interesting from the
portals perspective were:
•
myExperiment - Social Software for Workflow
Sharing – David De Roure, University of
Southampton and OMII-UK
•
Shibboleth Protection and Management of
Workflows – Richard Sinnott, National e-Science
Centre, University of Glasgow
OGSA Workflow
Mr Kelley attended this session to see the current
status of OGSA workflow and potentially how it
would relate to WHIP and other portal issues. The
session was interesting, but rather unrelated to many
of the portal issues.
Service Oriented Knowledge Utilities
(SOKU) Session
This session was interesting to see some of the new
technologies that are being adopted and brought
forth in the Web 2.0 community. It was useful to
Page 106
attend to see the possible future directions that portal
development could take such as AJAX.
Additional Sessions
Mr Kelley also attended these sessions:
•
e-Arts and e-Humanities
•
Grid: a means to what end?
•
Scaling Up to the Enterprise Level
•
Collaborative Grids
•
Various keynote speeches
These sessions were interesting to show the
directions in which the Grid was moving, especially
from the view of corporations that were deploying
Grids, and the tools and technologies they were using
in this facility.
In addition, following a brief meeting with Rob Allan
at OGF20 in which Mr Kelley and Allan discussed
their related portal projects, Mr Kelley contacted
Allan, Michael Russell (GridSphere), and Marlon
Pierce (OGCE) regarding the status of the GCE-RG at
OGF. Pierce, Russell and Mr Kelley had a discussion
about the credential issues related to OGCE and
GridPortlets, came up with some initial ideas, and
agreed that the Web 2.0 sessions at OGF21 would
provide a good opportunity for people to meet, share
ideas, and find collaborations.
3.21.3
OGF21
Mr Kelley attended OGF21 in Seattle, which took
place Oct 15 - 19, 2007.
Mr Kelley attended various sessions, mostly the
Web/Portals related sessions that were happening in
the main theatre. Many interesting topics came up
during these sessions, and it seemed as if the portal
efforts might very well be re-invigorated with this
new OGF shift towards collaborative environments,
Grid computing environments, and Web 2.0
technologies.
Following discussions after OGF20 between Michael
Russell (GridSphere/PSNC), Mr Kelley, and Marlon
Pierce (OGCE), Mr Kelley was able to organise a
meeting with Michael to talk further about the more
advanced portal interoperability issues and get a
technical presentation of his upcoming software
package, entitled Vine. Vine looks very interesting
and has many prospects regarding the issues of portal
back-end interoperability and development toolkits
for building portal components. Additionally, Mr
Kelley met with other Portal developers, including
GridSphere’s Oliver Wehrens (AEI) and talked briefly
with Gregor von Laszewski about the portal efforts he
would be working towards in the near future.
Beyond the portals discussions and meeting
attendance, Mr Kelley was actively involved in the
full-day GridNet2 meeting, where a colleague from
Cardiff, Dr Matthew Shields, presented much of the
work Cardiff University is undertaking within
GridNet2. After initial presentations by many groups
and individuals, much discussion took place
concerning the prospect of continuing GridNet2 by
submitting a new proposal. Mr Kelley was actively
involved in this discussion, as well as in a discussion
on how to improve communication between
researchers and information exchange within the
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.22 Dr Amrey Krause – Edinburgh
consortium. At the end of the meeting, when plans
were being made on how to proceed further, Mr
Kelley volunteered to help with any new proposal
should it materialise.
3.21.4
OGF22
Mr Kelley participated primarily in the WFM-RG
sessions and some additional sessions at OGF22.
WFM-RG
The general Workflow Sharing and Interoperability
session focused on the need for sharing workflows for
scientific applications. There was an interesting
discussion on the responses to the questionnaire that
was circulated before the session asking for use-cases
and practical guidelines for the sharing of workflows.
Mr Kelley participated in this discussion and asked
some questions regarding the different application
groups and the scope in which workflow-sharing was
envisioned (between application domains, or solely
within domains, etc). There was a committee
developed to take the results of this questionnaire
and write them up in an OGF document.
Additional Sessions
Mr Kelley also attended several additional sessions
throughout the conference and had the opportunity
to meet with GridSphere (and Vine) developer
Michael Russell (PSNC) who gave him a
demonstration of the new work he is involved in
using Adobe Flex (Flash) to enable more interactive
portal development (Web 2.0).
This was very interesting and Mr Kelley thought that
some of this work could be used within the WHIP
project to enable the portal-side sharing of
workflows. Flex also seemed to be a potential
technology for interactively building and visualizing
workflows within a web environment.
It was decided that the best meeting for the initial
EDGeS BoF would be at OGF23 in Barcelona, as
many EDGeS partners would not be attending
OGF22. (OGF22 was quite small, with only 240
participants.) Mr Kelley expected to be attending
OGF23 on non-GridNet2 funds to pursue this aspect
of his application.
3.22
Dr Amrey Krause –
Edinburgh
Dr Amrey Krause is an Applications Consultant at the
Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre.
For a summary of Dr Krause’s GridNet2 activities, see
section 2.22, Dr Amrey Krause – Edinburgh.
3.22.1
GGF16
Working Groups
Data Area Meeting
All data area groups reported on the current status of
their work, including the DAIS-WG.
DAIS-WG
There were two DAIS-WG meetings. The following
updates were presented to the community:
•
Norman Paton presented an overview of the
WS-DAI specifications and the progress since
GGF 15.
•
A new document has been added to GridForge:
Interoperability Plan for DAIS Working Group
Specifications, discussing how interoperability
between DAIS implementations can be verified.
•
An implementation of WS-DAIX built on top of
OGSA-DAI was demonstrated by Steven Lynden.
The implementation highlighted several issues
and comments on the WS-DAIX specification
which would be addressed after GGF16.
•
RDF implementations of the WS-DAI
specification were presented by groups from
UPM (Madrid) and AIST (Japan). The DAIS
charter would be amended to include an RDF
realisation of the specification. The RDF
implementers organised a F2F meeting taking
place in Edinburgh after GGF16. Dr Krause had
spoken to members of these groups.
DAIS-WG Further Actions
The groups involved in the RDF realisation arranged
a F2F meeting in Edinburgh in June 2006. Dr Krause
registered and planned to attend this event.
Comments on WS-DAI received during the public
comment period would be addressed by the editors.
ByteIO-WG
There was an update on the status of the ByteIO
specifications.
Michel Drescher demonstrated his implementation of
the ByteIO specification.
An interoperability meeting involving those groups
who had done an implementation of ByteIO was
agreed upon, although no specific dates were
planned.
Unfortunately, Mark Morgan, who was an author of
the specification and had also provided an
implementation, did not attend the meeting. During
the last F2F (which Dr Krause did not attend) a quick
interoperability test failed between Dr Krause’s
implementation and Morgan’s.
Byte I/O WG Further Actions
An interoperability meeting between the
implementers of the spec was planned. Dr Krause
had written a simple implementation of ByteIO
giving access to a file system and was planning to
incorporate this into OGSA-DAI for delivery of
BLOBs from a database or similar. Dr Krause hoped
to have a working prototype of this by the
interoperability meeting. There were some issues
with interoperability with the implementation which
Dr Krause would have to fix.
Converging Web Services Standards
BoF
This was a meeting to inform the community about
the convergence of the WSRF specifications and the
WS Management specifications. There was a lively
discussion about the convergence and migration
issues. The OGSA-DAI team was concerned about
this as they had to migrate to the merged standards
eventually. This meeting was very useful as it gave an
overview of what is going to happen and it made Dr
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3.22 Dr Amrey Krause – Edinburgh
Krause aware of the issues. The merger was not
happening very soon, so it was more of a long-term
issue to be aware of in general.
Workshops
The RDF realisation F2F meeting in Edinburgh in
June was also discussed.
ByteIO-WG
OGSA-DAI Technology Update
The ByteIO session gave an overview of the ByteIO
group and specifications, and an update on progress
including implementations and interoperability work.
There was an OGSA-DAI workshop at which an
overview of OGSA-DAI was presented and an update
given on the features of the latest OGSA-DAI version.
OGSA-DMI working group session
There were some interesting discussions with current
and prospective users of OGSA-DAI.
Data Access and Integration
This workshop had presentations from e-Science
projects that were working on data access and
integration problems, especially from Asia, on the
current status of their work. This was interesting
mainly from an OGSA-DAI point of view. OGSA-DAI
was being used by many groups, especially in Asia.
Meetings
The OGSA-DMI session concentrated on the initial
work on the functional specification.
Workshops
Mini-Symposium/OGSA-DAI User Forum
The mini-symposium was an OGSA-DAI workshop at
which an overview of OGSA-DAI was presented and
an update on the features of the latest OGSA-DAI
version.
Globus Data Management for Architects
Michel Drescher/ByteIO
This workshop gave an overview of the data
management tools available as part of the Globus
Toolkit.
Dr Krause had a follow-up to the ByteIO-WG meeting
with Michel Drescher in which they discussed
implementation issues. This was very useful.
Education and Training Community Group
Workshop
The following WS-DAI specifications which Dr
Krause ha co-authored were returned from the GGF
editor after the public comment period:
The Education & Training Community Group
(ET-CG) planned to develop a programme of work to
increase awareness of the importance of education
and training for Grid computing, sharing best
practice and developing standards for quality
assurance and mechanisms for sharing E&T
resources.
•
Web Services Data Access and Integration – The
Core (WS-DAI) Specification
Others
•
Web Services Data Access and Integration – The
Relational Realization
Progress
•
Web Services Data Access and Integration – The
XML Realization
Issues and comments regarding the ByteIO
specifications were addressed by authors.
Progress
WS-DAI specifications
Dr Krause also attended the OGF Town Hall.
A response to the comments that were received
during the public comment period was published on
GridForge.
3.22.3
ByteIO comments
DMI-WG Meetings
Issues and comments regarding the ByteIO
specifications had been submitted to the authors.
There were two sessions for the DMI-WG which
covered an overview and discussion of the functional
specification.
3.22.2
GGF18
Working Groups
Data Area Meeting
All data area groups, including the DAIS-WG,
reported on the current status of their work.
DAIS-WG
OGF20
Working Groups
RM-WG
The RM-WG sessions covered the scope and initial
discussions for the group.
SAGA Overview
There was an overview of SAGA API and first
demonstrations of SAGA API implementations.
There was an update to the community on DAIS-WG
activities and the group discussed progress towards
the development of data access services for RDF data
resources within the WS-DAI framework.
DAIS WG
Two specifications have been drafted for RDF data
resource access. These were presented at the meeting.
The interoperability testing status was discussed.
Page 108
There was an update on progress and discussion on
RDF-S specifications.
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.22 Dr Amrey Krause – Edinburgh
There was a presentation and discussion on RDF-S
use cases and specifications.
Workshops
Globus and Community
This workshop gave an overview of the latest progress
in the Globus community.
One session concerned the results of the
OGSA-ByteIO Interoperability Fiesta that was started
20 July 2007 were presented.
The other session covered creating and compiling an
Experience Document for OGSA-ByteIO. This
mandatory document would be the last publication of
the OGSA-ByteIO WG, advancing the ByteIO
standard to an OGF Standards Recommendation.
There were presentations on various database access
tools on the Grid.
An example for higher level interoperation between
Genesis II and OGSA-DAI services was discussed.
This might be taken forward as an MSc project in
EPCC.
OGSA-DAI users group meeting
DAIS-WG
There was an overview of OGSA-DAI and future
plans were discussed. There were OGSA-DAI user
presentations on the following projects:
There was an update on progress and discussion on
RDF-S specifications.
Data management convenor
OGSA-DAI users group meeting
•
Bridges Project (Richard Sinnott)
•
VOTES Project (Anthony Stell)
•
SBRN GEMEPS
•
Nano-CMOS
•
GEODE (Larry Tan)
This workshop considered the complete spectrum of
data work across OGF from the higher level vision
being defined by the OGSA data architecture group;
the data standards being produced such as DAIS and
ByteIO; the technologies realising these standards
such as OGSA-DAI; and then to the end user
developers trying to building applications with these
technologies.
•
SEE-GEO and GEESE (Chris Higgins)
Workshops
•
VOMS on OGSA-DAI (Valerio Venturi)
Globus and Community
Meetings
Dr Krause attended the following meetings:
•
OGSA-DAI and information retrieval (Greg
Newby, University of Alaska Fairbanks)
•
Globus committers meeting
•
LIBI Project (EGEE2): OGSA-DAI Performance
testing (Giacinto Donvito)
Progress
ByteIO interoperability testing
There were four workshop sessions for Globus and
Community.
•
The first session had a high-level overview, as
well several in-depth presentations, for Globus
tools. Dr Krause presented an overview of OGSADAI 3.0. There was a closing panel for
community questions.
•
The second session discussed the growing
complexity of the Globus toolkit and how this is
being addressed by the Globus Toolkit team.
•
The third session covered standards, looking at
the following questions:
Public comments on the interoperability festival
document have been received.
•
Are standards important for the
components?
Discussions of interoperability testing documents are
ongoing.
•
Which standards are being used?
An interoperability test was planned for July 2007.
EPCC was planning to participate with an
implementation of the ByteIO interfaces for OGSADAI.
DAIS interoperability testing
EPCC was planning to provide an implementation of
WS-DAIX on OGSA-DAI.
3.22.4
OGF21
Working Groups
•
Dr Krause found this to be a useful workshop.
Other Workshops
Dr Krause also attended the following workshops:
•
GridNet2 Workshop
•
OMII-UK
The OMII-UK workshop looked at reducing the
gap between researchers and resources
ByteIO-WG
There were two sessions for the ByteIO-WG.
The fourth session looked at the question of how
Globus components work together. It would be
useful to see projects that brought the Globus
components together.
•
Data Integration Solutions with OGSA-DAI
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3.23 Mr William Lee - Imperial
This workshop presented the new features and
capabilities of OGSA-DAI and provided an
opportunity for discussion between users and
developers.
Others
Dr Krause also attended the keynote speech by Steve
Tuecke.
Progress
ByteIO interoperability testing
Interoperability testing for ByteIO implementations
started on 20th July 2007. Four implementations of
the ByteIO interfaces participated in the tests.
An experiences document was created during an
OGF21 session. It was expected to be concluded by
OGF22. Each implementation provides comments
and experiences to the document.
3.22.5
OGF22
General Sessions
•
Opening session
•
Keynote: Charlie Catlett: What OGF Can Do for
Enterprises (A View from the CIO Office)
•
Keynote: Irving Wladawsky-Berger: Cloud
computing, Grids and the upcoming Cambrian
Explosion in IT
•
Keynote: Addison Snell: Grid Usage and
Productivity in HPC
•
Jen Schopf: The Encyclopedia of Life: A Web
Page for Every Species
Working Group Sessions
OGSA-DMI
This session covered an overview of the specification.
There were several implementations of the
specification and an interoperability fiesta was
planned to take place before OGF 23.
OGSA Data Architecture Future Directions
The OGSA data architecture group was closed. The
original aim of the working group had been achieved
and it was agreed that there was no effort available
for further work and re-chartering of the group.
DFDL
There was a progress update and a description of the
DFDL specification.
SAGA
DAIS WG
Issues were presented by the OGSA-DAI
development team currently implementing WS-DAIX
and WS-DAIR specifications. An interesting
discussion ensued and useful feedback was noted for
the WS-DAIR/WS-DAIX recommendations.
Dr Krause presented feedback on an implementation
of WS-DAIX by the University of Columbia. The main
issue was that their tooling did not support the WSDL
document that is included in the specification.
RDF-S Specifications Update
There was an update on progress and discussion on
the RDF-S specifications. This meeting was very
useful.
Workshops
Data Management Workshop
There were four sessions for the Data Management
workshop.
The aim of this workshop was to discuss issues and
strategies in Grid data management from an OGF
and SNIA perspective with a focus on file system and
data movement.
This workshop was useful and there were several
presentations that were of great interest to Dr
Krause.
Meetings
There was a SAGA+DAIS meeting with Andre Merzky
and DAIS-WG members to prepare for the working
group session, which then discussed the development
of SAGA APIs for DAIS.
Progress
ByteIO-WG
The participants of the interoperability experiment
summarised their experiences. Dr Krause prepared a
report from the OGSA-DAI/EPCC perspective. The
contributions were collected in an experiences
document which was awaiting comments by the
contributors. It was to be submitted as an OGF
document when all participants had reviewed it.
3.23
Mr William Lee Imperial
The reports for William Lee are consolidated with Dr
Stephen McGough’s reports. For more information,
see section 3.25, Dr Stephen McGough – Imperial.
For a summary of Mr Lee’s GridNet2 activities, see
section 2.23, Mr William Lee – Imperial.
The SAGA and DAIS session included an overview of
the DAIS specification for the benefit of the SAGA
members.
3.24
A SAGA API for the DAIS specifications was being
planned. SAGA was use-case driven. They were not
interested in mirroring DAIS interfaces on the clientside. DAIS use cases would be used to drive the SAGA
API specification.
Mark Leese’s reports are consolidated into Dr Steve
Fisher’s reports. For more information, see section
3.12, Dr Steve Fisher – STFC.
Page 110
Mr Mark Leese –
STFC
For a summary of Mr Leese’s GridNet2 activities, see
section 2.24, Mr Mark Leese – STFC.
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.25 Dr Stephen McGough – Imperial
3.25
Dr Stephen
McGough – Imperial
Other Groups
Other groups which were of interest included the
following:
Dr Stephen McGough is Technical Co-ordinator for
the London e-Science Centre, based in the
Department of Computing at Imperial College.
•
Dr Stephen McGough’s GridNet2 award and this
report also cover the GridNet2 activities for Mr
William Lee and Mr Vesselin Novov.
GRAAP (Grid Resource Allocation Agreement)
WG who were evaluating the use of JSDL as part
of their WS-Agreement specification
•
OGSA EMS (Execution Management Service)
team who were determining how JSDL fits into
the OGSA architecture
•
SAGA group who wished to know more about the
API that JSDL was exposing.
For summaries of the GridNet2 activities covered by
this award, see the following sections:
•
Section 2.23, Mr William Lee – Imperial
•
Section 2.25, Dr Stephen McGough – Imperial
•
Section 2.28, Mr Vesselin Novov – Imperial
3.25.1
GGF14
Dr McGough attended GGF14. His main areas of
focus were as follows:
3.25.2
GGF15 & OGSA F2F
Dr McGough and Mr Lee attended GGF15. There was
also an OGSA F2F meeting at GGF15. Their main
areas of focus were:
•
GRAAP
•
JSDL
•
GRAAP
•
OGSA
•
EMS
•
EMS
•
SAGA
•
CDDLM
•
JSDL
•
OGSA RSS
•
OGSA BES
•
BES (EMS, BES)
JSDL
JSDL
The main reason for attending GGF14 was the activity
of disseminating JSDL. The JSDL 1.0 specification
was almost complete and was in public comment.
Achieving this required a campaign of information to
the rest of the GGF community to both read and
comment on the specification, as well as look towards
adopting it for their work. The specification was the
culmination of many months of effort from a large
number of contributors, significant numbers of which
were from the UK e-Science community.
The JSDL specification had passed its public
comments period and the group was focused on
dealing with these public comments. This had
produced a number of clarification points for the
specification and a number of comments about
desired features which were not currently present.
The first session focused on dealing with the
comments and figuring out which could be corrected
in the document and which were features for future
versions. There was a strong presence in this meeting
from EGEE who had a number of comments on the
JSDL specification. These were addressed with some
level of satisfaction. In the second session, there was
a presentation by a new (fifth) implementer of JSDL
from Intel. This showed that there was a major
uptake of JSDL within the wider (industrial)
community.
Dr McGough had co-chaired this group since its
concept at GGF5 and Mr Lee has been an active
participant of the effort. Sessions were organised to
present the JSDL specification and those groups
which were early adopters of the JSDL specification.
This gave Dr McGough and Mr Lee the opportunity to
showcase GridSAM, the OMII-funded, Grid Job
submission and monitoring service which they have
been developing at Imperial College. Three other
early adopters also gave presentations, along with
two other working groups who identified how they
could use JSDL in their work. This showed significant
early adoption of JSDL. Discussion of future
directions for the JSDL group also took place.
OGSA-BES
The OGSA BES (Basic Execution Service) has been
developing a service to wrapper the JSDL document
language. This was an area Dr McGough and Mr Lee
were keenly supporting as this would increase the
uptake of JSDL and also matched with their work on
GridSAM. Dr McGough and Mr Lee were active in the
OGSA-BES work.
GRAAP
The GRAAP group were continuing to integrate the
JSDL specification within examples in their
documents. RSS was continuing to define how to
select resources within the Grid. This, again, tied in
closely with how JSDL was defined and how
GridSAM could be used. The EMS group focused on
how to model the submission of a job to a BES
container, either directly or through the use of a job
manager service. These presentations showed a
strong take-up within the GGF of both JSDL and
BES. Dr McGough and Mr Lee were extremely active
in the JSDL and BES groups. This was giving them
the opportunity to influence the outcome of this work
based on the experiences gained within the UK from
GridSAM.
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3.25 Dr Stephen McGough – Imperial
CDDLM
SAGA
CDDLM was defining a mechanism for deployment
and provisioning on the Grid. The CDDLM group was
keen to work closely with JSDL, using it both above
and below their approach.
Work continued with the SAGA group looking at the
API level for job submission and in the RSS group for
how to select which resources should be used. Dr
McGough and Mr Lee also made a presentation on
GridSAM at the OMII-UK reach-out session.
During the OGSA F2F meeting, the work of EMS was
continued as the group looked into how CDDLM
could be integrated into the models proposed during
the main meeting, and developed an overall
architecture for the execution of Jobs in a Grid,
bringing JSDL, BES and CDDLM together. This was
an area where Dr McGough and Mr Lee had a lot to
offer the community.
3.25.3
GGF16 & OGSA F2F
The GGF16 meeting also included an OGSA F2F
meeting. Dr McGough and Mr Lee attended GGF16.
Their main areas of focus were:
OGSA
In the OGSA sessions and F2F meetings, Dr
McGough and Mr Lee were able to take an active role
in the information model sessions for BES and the
OGSA Container. This work developed from their
efforts with GridSAM. JSDL was also on the panel for
the OGSA session, again showing that JSDL and the
work Dr McGough and Mr Lee have been funded to
carry out were gaining wide acceptance within the
Grid community.
OGSA-BES
•
OGSA
•
Grid Interoperation
•
SAGA
•
OMII-UK presentation
•
Grid Scheduling
The BES group was rapidly moving towards a
standard. They seek (as part of the interoperation
work) to be able to provide a standards approach to
job submission. This effort also fitted in well with the
work of the JSDL group and that of GridSAM. Dr
McGough and Mr Lee were well placed to contribute
to the BES standard from their prior experience in
this area and the ideas they could bring through from
the UK community.
•
OGSA
Standards Interoperation
•
RSS
•
JSDL
•
BES
There was much interest at this GGF about standards
interoperation, specifically in the area of how Grid
infrastructure could be made to interoperate. There
were two different groups looking at two distinct
cases:
JSDL
The JSDL 1.0 specification document had been
published (GFD.56), and the priority was to
disseminate it to the wider Grid community. At this
GGF, there were two sessions regarding JSDL:
•
The first session was a workshop to disseminate
JSDL.
The session included a tutorial on JSDL and the
presentation of five projects which were adopting
JSDL.
Again GridSAM was presented as one of the early
adopters of JSDL. This brings the number of
projects which have presented their use of JSDL
to seven, along with four other projects informing
us that they are evaluating/using JSDL. A total of
six GGF groups are now using JSDL as part of
their work and there are eleven different
Distributed Resource Management services
which JSDL can be translated into.
•
The second session was a discussion on how
JSDL should progress in the future.
The material from the last OGSA F2F breakout
session was presented and a discussion held.
The consensus was that a parallel job application
extension, software requirements and
reservations/co-allocations were the areas where
most people wanted JSDL to work on next. Work
on a proposed parallel extension was presented
during the session.
Page 112
1. Using existing Grid tools (mainly Globus) and
getting Grids working together
2. Using emerging standards (JSDL, BES) and using
these for interoperation.
Dr McGough and Mr Lee’s efforts were placed firmly
in the latter category with work on GridSAM fitting
nicely into the interoperation work. This again
highlighted the huge take-up of JSDL and BES.
Grid Scheduling
Grid Scheduling was more removed from the efforts
that have been completed with JSDL and GridSAM;
however, these did relate to the efforts carried out as
part of the ICENI project which Dr McGough and Mr
Lee were involved with before. This had allowed them
to feed the results from this effort into this research
group.
3.25.4
GGF17
Dr McGough and Mr Lee attended GGF17. Their
main areas of focus were as follows:
•
HPC Profile BoF
•
SAGA
•
OGSA
•
OGSA RSS
•
OGSA EMS
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.25 Dr Stephen McGough – Imperial
•
JSDL
•
Shibboleth
•
OGSA Information model
•
GIN
JSDL
At GGF17, the main focus for the JSDL group was on
the definiti1on of a parallel job extension.
Five projects, including GridSAM, presented their
extensions to the JSDL specification for parallel jobs.
This information was considered and evaluated in
terms of what the wider community would really
require from parallel job submissions. This was work
that McGough and Mr Lee were able to contribute
fully to and provide insight from their prior work in
developing a parallel extension for GridSAM based
on requirements from their users. This also brought
up a discussion on how JSDL documents should be
extended as this would be our first extension. By the
end of the meeting, the group had created a draft
schema for a SPMD extension.
HPC Profile BoF
Mr Novov has taken over Mr Lee’s role at the London
e-Science Centre as developer for the GridSAM
project, along with Mr Lee’s work on the OMII
security work. Mr Novov attended the GGF meetings
in place of Mr Lee, particularly the security sessions
at GGF in alignment with his work on security.
Because this was the first meeting since the merger
with the EGA, many of the sessions at this event
contained a more significant amount of
dissemination.
JSDL
The JSDL sessions focused on the dependant job
proposed extension and the parameter sweep job.
Both of these items have been requested by the UK
e-Science community. Much progress was made on
these items, although no consensus was reached and
not enough detail emerged to make a draft schema.
From work that happened at the last OGSA F2F
meeting, focusing on the HPC use case, a BoF
meeting was held to form a new group to work on
interoperation between different Grids. This work
would be based on profiling down the BES and JSDL
specifications. This was highly relevant work for what
Dr McGough and Mr Lee had been doing already and
something that they were taking a full and active role
within. The plan was set out to hold an interoperation
session at SuperComputing 06 in November.
OGSA
OGSA-BES
HPCP
The next iteration of the BES specification was
worked upon which removed some of the
complexities that had been added from the previous
iteration, thus bringing it back more to what was
already the case with GridSAM. The information
modelling group continued its efforts in modelling
the BES service and an overall information model for
the Grid. Again, this was relevant as a better way for
describing resource requirements within a JSDL
document.
The work on HPCP basic profile involved mostly
dissemination at this event as Supercomputing was
only one month away and all groups were working
hard on implementation. Dr McGough and Mr Novov
took the opportunity to meet up with a number of the
other HPCP projects and discuss their work. This was
very useful in terms of development for the
interoperation event. BES was also involved in the
interoperation event and would use this to help
finalise the document.
Other Groups
Other Groups
The EMS group looked at the overall architecture and
specifically how CDDLM would fit within this. Dr
McGough and Mr Lee continued to feed into the
efforts of the SAGA and RSS groups.
Dr McGough and Mr Novov continued their liaisons
with the SAGA and OGSA EMS groups, giving
feedback from their work with GridSAM.
3.25.5
GGF18
Dr McGough and Mr Novov attended GGF18.
Their main areas of focus were as follows:
•
HPCPBP
•
Information Model
•
SAGA
•
JSDL
•
OGSA BES
•
OGSA EMS
•
GGF Authz WG
During the OGSA sessions, the material on
ClassAds style resource matching was discussed
with a wider audience. This seemed to reach general
support. These ideas were discussed and extended in
both the OGSA and JSDL sessions. This work is
highly relevant for the future of GridSAM and Dr
McGough and Mr Novov were able to make
significant contributions to the development.
OGSA Authz
The Shibboleth project is developing an open source
implementation to support inter-institutional sharing
of resources subject to access controls. Since the
targeted resources are Web, not Grid, resources,
there had been a number of activities attempting to
integrate Shibboleth in Grid settings.
One such effort was a prototype system allowing NGS
users to access NGS facilities securely through the
Shibboleth mechanism. The workshops provided
updates on this and other similar activities and
followed on experiences learned from the integration
efforts. Those outcomes were of interest due to
Shibboleth being one of the access control systems
considered for integration in Dr McGough and Mr
Novov’s OMII security project. The feedback
provided at the workshops was helpful in assessing
the cost and feasibility of re-designing the OMII
security project to use Shibboleth or continuing with
Page 113
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.25 Dr Stephen McGough – Imperial
the initial, simpler, prototype based on the OGSAAuthz architecture using PERMIS, another access
control system.
The goal of Dr McGough and Mr Novov’s security
project was to build an authorisation system for web
services hosted in an OMII Container. As such the
system architecture, security standards and protocolrelated extensions provided by the Authz-WG were of
particular relevance to their OMII-Authz project. The
project's architecture closely follows the design of the
OGSA-Authz architecture proposed by the AuthzWG.
3.25.6
OGF19
Dr McGough attended OGF19, and his main areas of
focus were:
•
GIN
•
OGSA HPCP
•
OGSA Security
•
OGSA EMS
•
OGSA Information & data modelling
•
OGSA Workflow
•
OMII Software Forum
•
Standards All Hands
•
QoS BoF
OMII-Authz also uses SAML.
•
JSDL
•
Subsequent evolution of the SAML standard to
version 2.0
GIN
•
Various ideas on integrating Shibboleth
components in Grid authorisation systems
•
Possible adoption of another OASIS standard –
the eXtensible Access Control Markup Language
(XACML).
The discussions in the session focused on the
following:
•
Refining the functionality expected from different
sub-components of the Authz architecture
•
Authorisation request-related extensions to the
Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML)
By adhering to the requirements of these standards
and relevant extensions, the development efforts
behind the OMII security work ensured greater
compatibility between OMII-Authz and other systems
based on GT4 and Shib-Grid.
GIN
As a job submission service, GridSAM provided
facilities for transfer of data files through various
protocols. GridFTP was one of the currently
supported protocols with plans to include SRB in the
near future. For this reason, the activities in the Grid
Interoperation Now (GIN) Community Group were of
significant interest to the GridSAM team. Among
other activities, this group's focus was on the
implementation interoperation in data management
and movement (GIN-DATA) and job description and
submission (GIN-JOBS). The GGF sessions were
used to disseminate results of the group's
interoperability tests. Of particular note were the
GIN-DATA tests including three different
technologies, two of which have direct relevance to
the GridSAM development and maintenance and user
support efforts:
•
The GridFTP technology that can be seen as
lowest common denominator for data movement
in Grids
•
The SRM as an asynchronous standard interface
to Grid storage systems to provide virtualisation
of storage resources
•
The SRB as a shared collection management
system of multiple (distributed) storage systems
and their properties
Page 114
In the Grid Interoperation/Interoperability Now
(GIN) session, not only were JSDL, BES and HPCP
given top billing for their interoperability, but
GridSAM was also given significant mention. This
showed not only that the standards work with which
Dr McGough’s team have been engaged was having a
wide impact on the community, but also that
GridSAM was seen internationally as a prime
example of using these emerging standards.
Feedback from the interoperation which happened at
SC06 was presented; again GridSAM was seen as one
of the production Grids supporting the new emerging
standards. The session went on to discuss where
interoperability would go in the future. This covered
such area as security – where there was mixed
enthusiasm for the HPCP current use of username
and passwords – with many calling for more secure
techniques to be used such as X509. As GridSAM
already supported this, Dr McGough was positive
towards this advancement.
HPC Profile
The OGSA HPC Profile session focused on the
changes since SC06. This included new versions of
the HPC and BES specifications in light of what had
happened at SC06. The most significant change to the
HPC profile was that of adding a security section to
the profile allowing for the use of X.509 certificates.
This was useful as this is the default security method
used for GridSAM. There was also discussion of how
to delegate credentials with one option being the use
of a MyProxy service. The MyProxy service was
already being used within GridSAM, and hence Dr
McGough was able to contribute his experiences to
this discussion.
OGSA Security
In the OGSA Security session, there was some
discussion over the diverging security models
between OGSA Security and the HPC profile security.
The HPC profile group had been adopting a stopgap
security model – user name and password – though
OGSA Security is proposing a more complete security
model. Since the HPC profile group was now
addressing the more general security scenario, it was
hoped this would be resolved. This was beneficial for
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.25 Dr Stephen McGough – Imperial
GridSAM as the GridSAM security model was more
complete and the GridSAM team preferred not to
support username/password.
OGSA EMS
The OGSA EMS scenarios document version 1.0 had
been submitted now to the editor for review. This
contained basic execution patterns which use both
JSDL and BES, and the main models in this
document were on how to submit a job to a resource.
The discussion centred on how the group should
progress for the next document. This included such
things as information services, Usage Records and
Resource Usage service.
OGSA Information and Data
Modelling
Work in the OGSA Information and data model
session focused on the use of JSDL and XQuery to
perform job and resource matching. The proposal
was to add a more complete information model which
could be used within a JSDL2 document and
consumed by a BES2 service. The idea, as discussed
previously though extended here, was to add
Capabilities and Requirements to both the JSDL
document and the resource description document.
These could refer to each other through the use of
XQuery statements. This would thus allow for the
BES2 service (or potentially some higher service) to
match jobs and resources. This again shows the wide
uptake of both JSDL and BES within the wider Grid
community.
OGSA Workflow
For the OGSA Workflow session there was much
discussion on how OGSA should deal with workflow.
There was a proposal to do a simple workflow
language – much in the same way that JSDL was a
success due to its simplicity – where each “node”
would be a workflow document or a JSDL document.
This was felt to be a rat-hole that would consume
large amounts of time without giving significant
return. Three alternative approaches were proposed:
1. Investigate how to layer workflow on top of
OGSA
2. Change JSDL, BES, RSS to support simple job
dependencies
3. Do workflow interoperation
There was significant interest in approaches 1 and 2
though none in approach 3 at present. Dr McGough
was selected to lead approach 1 and Michel Drecher
to lead approach 2. The idea of 1 was more in fitting
with the overall way GridSAM worked within the
wider ICENI II infrastructure and hence was more
appropriate for this work at OGF.
OMII Software Forum
(QoS) in the Grid, he led a BoF session at OGF19
meeting on QoS. This allowed Dr McGough to
present ideas on QoS to the wider Grid community to
see if there was enough synergy to take this work
forward. There seemed to be a lot of confusion within
the wider (outside of OGF) community for the
meaning of QoS. Within networking, QoS has a very
specific meaning and, as such, members from this
community were unhappy with the use. Although
there was quite some interest within the community
on QoS issues, there was little in common between
the two areas. It was decided that this should stay as
a design team within OGSA until such time that there
would be more people working on the same issues.
JSDL
Although the JSDL sessions at this OGF were not
until the final half day of the meeting, over 30
attendees came to both the sessions, which is a large
number for a session at any time. The focus of these
sessions was on the following:
•
JSDL errata document
•
JSDL 2.0 discussion
•
Reaction to the HPC Profile draft document
•
Parallel application extension
•
Proposal for a parameter sweep extension
The errata document was feeding back corrections
into the JSDL 1.0 specification which have come in
since the document was published, mostly from
people who had implemented it. The intention was to
keep compatibility with JSDL 1.0 by not providing
any changes to the schema document, but instead
providing extensions where needed and clarifying the
text within the schema document. The JSDL 2.0
discussion focused on the implications of the work
presented in the OGSA Information model session. A
number of tracker items from the SPMD (parallel
jobs) document were discussed and resolved within
the session. A presentation of the HPC profile was
made and discussed within the group. It was decided
to roll a number of the clarifications that the HPC
profile group had made into the JSDL errata
document. There were a small number of changes to
the schema which were left out as these would break
interoperation with JSDL 1.0. A presentation was
made for a proposal to do a JSDL parameter sweep
extension. This was of keen interest for the Dr
McGough as users of GridSAM have been asking for
such functionality. The idea would be to use XPath
statements to mark parts of the document to be
changed along with lists of what that part of the
document should be changed to.
3.25.7
OGF20
Dr McGough and Mr Novov attended OGF20. The
main areas of interest for them were as follows:
During the OMII Software forum, GridSAM was
presented to the wider Grid community. Although Dr
McGough’s team were not presenting this work
themselves, they were able to attend the session to
answer questions and discuss GridSAM with
members of the audience.
•
Joint session on information modelling and
computing resources
•
JSDL
•
HPC Profile
QoS BoF
•
OGSA Workflow
Because of the work in which Dr McGough has been
active for the GRIDCC project on Quality of Service
•
Workflow sharing
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3.25 Dr Stephen McGough – Imperial
•
Grid Scheduling Architecture
HPC Profile
•
OGSA BES
•
OGSA RUS
•
OGSA EMS
•
GridNet2 meeting
The HPC Profile group was now working hard on
producing the implementation experiences
document. This was an area that Dr McGough and
Mr Novov were active within, both as developers of
JSDL and BES and also as active members of the
interoperation activity at SC06.
•
OGSA RSS
•
Service Level Terms
•
Authz
•
Grid in the Distributed Computing Landscape
•
OGSA F2F
Information Modelling and
Computing Resources
The joint session on information modelling and
computing resources was held to bring together those
people from the OGSA information
modelling/resource management design team, the
GLUE group and the Reference Model group. As
these groups were now all working on similar areas, it
was essential to prevent duplication of work. The
groups were asked to describe what their work was
and how it would fit together with the other emerging
standards. In all three cases, JSDL and BES were
identified as things that they would wish to interact
with. This shows that JSDL and BES now have major
adoption within the Grid community. Most groups
were now feeding their requirements into the JSDL
work and would help in the development of JSDL
2.0. As this work was highly relevant for McGough
and Novov’s development of GridSAM, they were
active within this session and were following up on
this effort.
JSDL
There were two documents in public comment that
were promoted at the JSDL sessions:
•
HPC profile application draft
•
Parallel application (SPMD) extension
There was, therefore, a reach-out effort at OGF20 to
encourage people to read these documents. For the
JSDL 1.0 errata, there was feedback from a new
project which had implemented JSDL (KnowARC),
bringing the number of known implementations to
eleven. This led to some new tracker items and some
of the existing tracker items being resolved. In most
cases, this was by tightening the definitions within
the document based on feedback. During the second
session, the ideas behind using XQuery were
presented to the group, along with proof of concept
examples showing that they could be used in this
context. The parameter sweep extension was
discussed further. In our final session, the group
discussed the JSDL 2.0 extension.
During the opening session of OGF20, the JSDL
group was awarded with the Open Grid Forum
Leadership Award. This award was given out to
individuals or groups within the OGF for outstanding
leadership and many contributions to the OGF
mission. This was a significant acknowledgement
from the community of the significance and the value
of the work the JSDL group had achieved.
Page 116
OGSA Workflow
In the OGSA Workflow session, the two approaches
(use existing workflow tools or design own workflow
language) were further discussed. Some scoping
activity was carried out on the group. Error handling
was placed out of scope while error detection was in
scope. Graphical representations and cyclic
declarations were also placed out of scope. The idea
of using BPEL over JSDL was proposed and the
OMII-BPEL project, which uses GridSAM as an
endpoint for BPEL activities, was presented. It was
asked “if BPEL is just endorsed, who will complain?”,
though this did not receive unanimous support. It
was decided that a survey of existing activity was
required before this work could continue further.
This work fitted in nicely with Dr McGough and Mr
Novov’s BES/JSDL work, but also with the general
workflow and components work they were doing as
part of the ICENI II development.
Workflow Sharing
By contrast, the Workflow Sharing session was more
concerned with how workflows could be shared
between Grid infrastructures. This could be through
workflow translation or through the ability of one
workflow system to execute a workflow in a different
architecture. This was again relevant due to Dr
McGough and Mr Novov’s work on the ICENI II
development.
Grid Scheduling Architecture
The GSA-RG was working on interoperability of Grid
scheduling entities. This was significant for the work
with JSDL and BES because a scheduling entity
would be the service built above a BES instance. Dr
McGough and Mr Novov were able to contribute their
knowledge from GridSAM, BES and JSDL into this
work.
OGSA BES
For OGSA BES, the effort was now towards writing
an experience document, to which Dr McGough and
Mr Novov were contributing.
OGSA RUS
The OGSA RUS-WG had been inactive for some time
as it had already published a specification. However,
in light of changes within the community, the
development of new standards and implementation
experience had led to the group being revived for
update. Through prior work (carried out by William
Lee), Dr McGough and Mr Novov had feedback to
give and had been active in this area. Much of
discussions in the OGSA-RUS-WG session
emphasised some fundamental scalability problems
occurring with very large data sets of usage records
and their transfer between clients and services and
how the RUS and UR specifications could be
improved in that respect.
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.25 Dr Stephen McGough – Imperial
Dr McGough and Mr Novov shared similar
experiences they had through the development of
GridRUS. The GridRUS project was funded by the
OMII-UK Managed Program. It was effectively a
prototype implementation of the RUS draft
specification providing query-able persistent storage
of Usage Records. Like the services developed by
some of the other participating groups, GridRUS is a
WS-I-compliant web service, therefore prone to the
discussed workload problems. However, much of the
advantage of GridRUS rested in its modular
architecture which allowed different components to
be configured and used separately, if needed, by the
user. The project suite consisted of the following:
•
The core engine providing a Java API for
managing persistence and query of usage records
job launching and file staging plug-ins
•
A web service implementing the Resource Usage
Service specification
•
A package of client APIs and command-line tools
for inserting or querying usage records stored in
a RU Service
•
A package of XML to Java bound classes
representing the RU Service and Usage Record
schemas
Should OMII-UK decide to fund further any
development effort in this project, GridRUS would be
in a very good position to become one of the first fully
compliant RUS implementations and a benchmark
product, given its highly flexible and reusable
architecture.
OGSA EMS
The OGSA EMS group was focusing on how to
discover information about the Grid for such things
as job submission. In their model, jobs are described
in JSDL and submitted to a BES instance. The work
of the group is now to define how information can be
obtained to achieve this. This was highly relevant
work as it fits in with GridSAM and the work on BES
and JSDL.
GridNet2 Meeting
Because this event was UK-based and, as such, most
GridNet2-funded people would be attending, there
was a GridNet2 meeting held during OGF20. This was
to check up on the status of GridNet2 spending and to
determine how to continue the effort of GridNet2 and
promote its achievements. During this meeting,
Omer Rana and Dr McGough were tasked with
organising a GridNet2 workshop at the next OGF
meeting.
OGSA RSS
The OGSA RSS group was working on the problem of
how to select the resources to use within the Grid.
This relied heavily on the JSDL description which
could be used by the candidate set generator to list
those resources which could execute the JSDL, based
on resource requirements. This was, again, another
scenario where JSDL was being used within the Grid
architecture.
terms that would be needed when discussing job
submissions and file transfers (BES and ByteIO).
This was significant work because it was something
that could be made use of in future versions of
GridSAM.
OGSA F2F
At the end of the main OGF event, a one-day OGSA
F2F was held. The relevant items in this meeting are
provided below. The OGSA EMS Scenarios document
had been completed. The document discussed how to
submit jobs to the Grid and relied on JSDL and BES.
The workflow discussion from earlier in the week was
continued. It was pointed out that other standards
bodies did exist and other workflow standards did
exist along with BPEL, such as XPDL although XPDL
was more abstract in nature. Examples of other
systems were given including Microsoft WF. In
conclusion, it was felt that a primer/best practices
document was most appropriate. Dr McGough and
Mr Novov would contribute to this.
OGSA Authz WG
Over the period of two Authz-WG sessions, the group
reviewed the status of some previously proposed and
some new profile specifications. More text was added
to the XACML Profile to cover obligations. The text
explained exactly how gridmap files could be replaced
with obligations, and how co-ordination decision
making could be enabled with obligations. The model
and diagrams of the WS Trust Profile were updated
and made more generic. Protocol flows were still left
the same but more possibilities were allowed. Some
of the effort was allocated to the definition of the
SAML V2.0 Profile for Virtual Organization
attributes. Attribute names to be included were
Virtual Organization, Group and Role,
essentially replicating the attributes from the XACML
Attribute Profile.
Of much interest, related to Dr McGough’s OMII
Authorisation project, were the reviews of a couple of
authorisation services of which the implementations
follow the XACML specification. G-Pbox, an
authorisation service based in gLite, had taken an
approach similar to the one in the OMII Authz
application; one of its main component is an
XACML-compliant PDP and the service interface
processes xacml-context:Request against a
repository of XACML policies and returns and
xacml-context:Response. The shared
similarities with other projects gave Dr McGough the
confidence that the OMII Authz service project is
evolving in a direction which might, in the near
future, allow Dr McGough and Mr Novov to take part
in a wider effort of testing/demonstrating
interoperable authorisation services between EGEE,
OSG, Globus and OMII.
The GridShib Project continued its focus on a hybrid
security token called X.509-bound SAML Token, that
is, a SAML assertion bound to an X.509 certificate. It
would be either a short-lived end-entity certificate or
a proxy certificate. The resulting X.509-bound SAML
Token Profile would be a straightforward extension
of the WS-Security X.509 Token Profile, and
therefore an implementation of the latter would be
automatically an implementation of the former.
Service Level Terms BoF
The Service Level Terms BoF was held as a follow up
to the QoS BoF held at the previous OGF meeting.
The intention of this BoF was to scope in depth those
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3.25 Dr Stephen McGough – Imperial
Grid in the Distributed Computing
Landscape
This was a generally informative session on current
state of Grid. The session explored the way Grid
infrastructure solutions had been used by
organisations around the world to enable the modern
knowledge-based, global economy. The discussion
reviewed the role of Grid technologies within the
broader realm of distributed computing and defined
the common categories of Grid in use today. The
presentation traced through the milestones of the
evolution of Grid technologies from applicationspecific solutions to dynamic, shared and serviceoriented infrastructures. The session's main focus
was a number of major trends in the use of Grids
today, as follows:
•
The use of the infrastructure to reduce cost of
operation, increase efficiency, optimisation and
interoperability.
•
The use of the infrastructure to manage workload
and services across multiple business units
within an organisation.
•
The use of the infrastructure to enable interorganisational, service-oriented collaboration,
within the boundaries of virtual organisations,
through the adoption of common standards and
practices.
3.25.8
OGF21
Dr McGough and Mr Novov attended OGF21. Their
main areas of focus were as follows:
•
RUS
•
GSA-RG
•
JSDL
•
Joint Session on Information Modelling for
Computing Resources
•
RSS
•
GridNet2 Workshop
•
OGSA Workflow
•
OGSA F2F, HPC Profile
•
SAGA
•
OGF tutorial on Vulnerability Assessment
•
Secure Coding Practices for Middleware
RUS-WG
The RUS-WG, as outlined previously, was re-working
its published specification, based on implementation
experiences. These included dealing with large
records and the ability to request sub-parts of the
whole Usage Record sets, along with the rendering of
RUS both in WS-I and WS-RF. As Dr McGough and
Mr Novov had previously implemented the old
specification for RUS, they were keen to give
feedback on their experiences on this work.
GSA-RG
The GSA-RG was focusing on scheduler
interoperation. In their architecture, they saw BES
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instances as being the end points for execution and
JSDL as the language to describe the jobs sent to
these resources. For this work, they sought to profile
JSDL in terms of which attributes within the
document are relevant for the scheduler and how
they should be interpreted. This again showed further
groups within the wider Grid community adopting
JSDL and BES. The work of GSA was not to use the
entirety of JSDL but to partner it with a scheduling
language for those things relevant to scheduling but
not to JSDL. McGough and Novov were able to take
an active role within this session, both as a team that
was developing scheduling above BES/JSDL through
GridSAM and also as part of the JSDL group with
knowledge of what was currently in JSDL and what
would likely be there in the future.
JSDL-WG
There were three sessions for JSDL at this OGF.
The first session was a general session for outlining
the JSDL-WG work and current status. The group
went over the JSDL 1.0 errata document for which
they had resolved 25 of the 32 issues. Extra issues
had been raised since the last F2F meeting. The JSDL
group was also collecting experience reports from
those groups that have implemented JSDL. At the
time, they had four responses, with more promised.
There was also a presentation from GridWay showing
their use of JSDL, which meant there were now
twelve known implementations of JSDL.
The second session was focused on the XQuery
extension for JSDL. This focused on the new idea to
use capabilities and requirements in a JSDL
document and how you could define the
requirements as XQuery requests over the (to be
matched) resource description document. This
session looked into how XQuery could be used to
achieve this goal and whether XPath, as a simpler
mechanism, could be used to achieve the same result.
The conclusion was that if all that the group wished
to achieve was to extract parts of the other document,
then XPath would be sufficient. However, if they
wanted to perform more complex operations on the
other document, for example, where the processor
speed is twice as important as the memory, then the
full XQuery was needed.
The third session was more like a BoF session. The
group was proposing to start some new work on an
Activity schema. This document, for which JSDL
would be a part, would contain the whole activity
lifecycle of the job. Information on resource usage,
scheduling, job status would all be placed into this
document, although the contents of these sections
would not be defined by this specification, merely
refer to the appropriate specification. There were
presentations on GridSAM, UDAP, GLUE and
NEREGI as to what each project has already covered
in this area. This session allowed Dr McGough and
Mr Novov to give a presentation on GridSAM and
place it in the limelight within the community.
The Joint Session on Information Modelling for
Computing Resources brought together most of the
parties that had discussed information models at the
last OGSA F2F meeting in a wider context. The
discussion was about how GLUE relates to other
specifications such as BES and JSDL. This allowed
the groups to fill in the details of how they were all
integrating their work together. For the JSDL group,
the focus was adding resource descriptions in the
JSDL document from those in GLUE.
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.25 Dr Stephen McGough – Imperial
The Resource Selection Service (RSS) is now
submitted to the OGF editor. This specification
defined an interface for how to select a set of
potential resources for executing a job. As such, it
relied heavily on JSDL as a job description language
and for terms defining the type of resources that are
appropriate. This again showed uptake of JSDL (and
BES) throughout the OGF.
GridNet2 Workshop
For this OGF, Dr McGough had organised a GridNet2
Workshop in collaboration with Omer Rana. This
allowed all participants funded through GridNet2 to
highlight the work they have achieved. Dr McGough
and Mr Novov were able to present work on
GridSAM, GRIDCC and the development of the
ICENI II architecture as areas which have both
influenced the development of the OGF standards,
and also benefited from these emerging standards.
As much of the scope for the OGSA Workflow group
had changed since the last OGF meeting, there was a
presentation of an overview of its progression and
metamorphosis into its new form. Out was the plan to
develop a workflow language or to add simple
workflow constructs onto JSDL. Instead, the group
was focusing on surveying what was currently being
used within the wider community. As such, the initial
results of the survey were presented. This led to
discussion on what else the group should be asking
and how to solicit responses from other groups. It
was also discovered at this stage that the WFM-RG is
currently performing a similar survey and it was
decided to combine the effort.
OGSA F2F
At the end of the OGF meeting a one day OGSA F2F
meeting was held. An EMS session was held to
discuss the revising of the EMS scenarios document.
The plan was to swap out BES for HPCP, where
appropriate, in the document and downplay CDDLM
as it is now “resting”. Other work, such as RSS,
needed to be reviewed. It was decided that, as there
was not yet enough community support for the
Service Level Terms work and as there was not
enough consensus for what to do in this area, it was
not a prime area for standardisation. As such, the
work was left until the group had knowledge on what
could be done and what people wanted to do. In the
area of workflow, it was decided that rather than
duplicating the work of the WFM-RG’s survey, OGSA
would collaborate with them on their survey, and
once completed, determine how best for OGSA to
progress with workflow. The Data Movement
Interface was an interesting piece of work which
helps abstract the user away from how data was
actually transported around the Grid. Rather than
specifying protocols and resources, the user specifies
known endpoints – one for where the data is
currently and one for where you wish the data to end
up. The DMI was then responsible for identifying the
most appropriate method for transferring the data.
This had major implications for both JSDL and
GridSAM. DMI could be used to describe the data
staging endpoints and GridSAM could use DMI to
source and send the files. This was highly relevant
work.
HPCP-WG
Much of the work in the HPC Profile WG session
focused on the upcoming Interoperability fest
scheduled to take place at the SuperComputing
convention in November'07.
In particular, much of the discussion covered the
profile extensions which were to be demonstrated as
new additions to the specification. The Data Staging
extensions were based in large part on the existing
Data Staging element in the JSDL standard, but the
extension document restricted the set of options
otherwise acceptable under the original specification.
The text of the extension explicitly listed the type of
data transfer protocols which compliant
implementations would be expected to support - http,
ftp (both supported by GridSAM) and scp. The
Activity Credential element would provide a security
context to the processing of a submitted
computational job. The inclusion of this element was
to account for the missing, but otherwise necessary,
security left out of the scope of the JSDL standard. At
the session, the group agreed on the general
framework, sequence and logistical details of the
interoperability demonstration which in the most
part would replicate the successful interoperability
fest at the SuperComputing in the previous year. The
functionality provided by the comparatively more
mature GridSAM already offered staging of
input/output files, as well as a particular service
configuration option, allowing the user to supply
security credentials necessary for data transfers
and/or the launching of the executables.
SAGA-RG
Simple API for Grid Applications (SAGA) is a C++
and Java implementation of the GWD-R.90 standard
specification. The efforts of the SAGA group are
focused on the development of a high level
framework for use in creating Grid-aware
applications. Dr McGough’s interest in the activities
of this group came from the fact that this API is
presented to the user as a simplified way to interact
with Grid-middleware products, with one such being
GridSAM. In designing and implementing the
recommendations in GWD-R.90, the group addresses
the inherited difficulties and issues of heterogeneity
and the complexity of Grid applications. Therefore,
SAGA was envisioned to provide common Grid
functionality at the correct level of abstraction, along
with the ability to hide varying underlying semantics.
SAGA was able to make an important contribution to
interoperability at the application level (an abstract
layer above the one where middleware, such as
GridSAM, functions), especially given that the SAGA
software environment had matured sufficiently,
thanks to advances at several levels: the SAGA
engines (C++ and Java); the adaptors for different
middleware distributions (Condor, GridSAM); and
the maturity of the core SAGA specification.
During the group session, the discussion revolved
mainly around the current status of the two
programme language bindings and the road-map
deliverables, as well as the specific ways SAGA
contributed to interoperability efforts among Grid
users, application and middleware developers, and
resource providers.
Vulnerability Assessment and Secure
Coding Practices for Middleware
The OGF tutorial on Vulnerability Assessment and
Secure Coding Practices for Middleware gave
McGough and Novov valuable insight into the lowlevel requirements for a secure software
development. Secure programming would be
essential for their OMII Authorisation application.
The tutorial was relevant to anyone attempting to
assess software for security flaws and for developers
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3 GridNet2 Reports
3.25 Dr Stephen McGough – Imperial
trying to minimise security flaws in software they
write. Part of the tutorial covered a process for
actively discovering vulnerabilities by:
•
OGSA Information
•
OGSA EMS
1. The gathering of information about a targeted
system.
•
Cloud Computing
•
GSA
•
GRAAP
•
OGSA Authz
2. The use of the collected information to direct the
search for vulnerabilities.
3. The integration of the above two steps into the
development cycle.
The tutorial pointed out specific coding practices for
prevention of vulnerabilities, exposed many types of
vulnerabilities with examples of how they would
commonly arise, and showed some simple techniques
for avoiding them.
OMII-UK Workshop
At the OMII-UK workshop, there was a presentation
of the overall direction of the organisation's current
activities. OMII-UK's mission had been to provide the
UK e-Science community and their international
collaborators with the software solutions and support
they needed to enable a sustained future. During the
session, there were demonstrations on some of the
ways to help research communities benefit from the
increasing number of resource providers - from
national Grid infrastructures, such as the NGS, to
campus Grids and departmental clusters. The
demonstrations also included examples of using
stable APIs (for example, SAGA) and showing how
common scenarios can be solved by integrating
components and providing new access mechanisms
such as portals, virtual research environments, and
desktop Grids. There was also discussion about how
projects could build on top of efforts such as GIN and
OMII-Europe to bring together Grids through open
standards and interoperable implementations. The
future of the OMII-UK and new developments in the
organisation's efforts are of a particular importance
to Dr McGough’s team in London e-Science Centre,
who have had a very productive relationship with
OMII-UK. A number of projects had already resulted
from this relationship, and some of them had already
proved successful in delivering Grid middleware
applications to the wider scientific community,
specifically:
•
GridSAM
•
GridRUS
•
OMII-Authz
•
GridBS
3.25.9
OGF22
Dr McGough and Mr Novov attended OGF22. Their
main areas of focus were as follows:
•
OGSA-RUS
•
SAGA
•
JSDL
•
WFM-RG
•
AIDS
•
HPCBP
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OGSA RUS-RG
With new reinvigoration of effort within the OGSARUS group, there were now new documents coming
out from this group. Implementations of this work
are in progress and interactions with new standards
are emerging. As Dr McGough’s team wrote the
OMII-RUS implementation, this is a prime area for
them to work within, and they are giving feedback on
their experience to inform the OGSA-RUS work.
SAGA-RG
The SAGA group was defining an API for accessing
the Grid. This was of interest to Dr McGough and Mr
Novov as one of the first areas for which they were
developing their API was job execution. This was not
seen as a competitor to JSDL and BES, but rather a
layer which could be built on top of these
specifications. Coders could use the SAGA API to
define jobs for execution, and then the
implementation of SAGA uses JSDL and BES to
execute the job. This was significant to Dr McGough
and Mr Novov as GridSAM had an API for developing
JSDL documents and submitting them which could
be extended to include the SAGA API.
JSDL-WG
The JSDL group held two main sessions, along with a
BoF session for the Application Instance Document
Schema (see below). The JSDL 1.0 Errata document
had completed the public comment phase and was
now awaiting evaluation from GFSG as to final
publication. This was significant as it was the
culmination of over twelve groups’ evaluation
through implementation of the schema, indicating
major uptake within the community. During the
general session, the JSDL group discussed the work
that was done previously for the parameter sweep
extension. This was proposed around one year ago,
though efforts on HPCP profile and the errata
document had caused this work to be suspended.
Through interest in uptake, mainly from GridSAM in
the UK community, this work was revived and
presented again. The document was effectively
complete and received positive feedback from those
attending the session. The intention was to tidy up
the document and submit it to GFSG. In the second
session, the JSDL group further discussed the
Application Instance Document Schema. For this, Dr
McGough and Mr Novov were able to present more
information on how they were using instance
information within GridSAM. It was proposed that
the scope of the work was too much, although it was
clarified that this would just be where to put the data
and not what the data was, not even to profile the
work of other standards. The consensus was to
continue this work within the JSDL group by scoping
out exactly what was needed – use case gathering –
and then evaluate how to take it further.
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.25 Dr Stephen McGough – Imperial
WFM-RG
Because of his role in the OGSA design team for
workflow, Dr McGough attended the WFM-RG
session. The WFM-RG was focusing on
interoperability in workflow and conducting a survey
of to find out what workflow systems and use cases
existed already. It was noted that there was already a
large amount of effort outside the OGF on workflow
standardisation, and the intention here was to survey
this before moving forward. This was of interest both
from the point of view of OGSA workflow and from
Dr McGough and Mr Novov’s work with ICENI II and
GRIDCC.
Application Instance Document
Scheme BoF
The Application Instance Document Schema BoF
allowed Dr McGough and Mr Novov to present their
instance extensions to the JSDL specification within
GridSAM. The intention of this group would be to
extend (probably outside) JSDL to encompass all the
other information about a job which is not part of the
jobs submission description. This would include
information about scheduling, resource usage, and
security credentials used. The information here
would be dynamic and might not all be located in the
same document but could just refer to other
documents. It was not clear at the end of the BoF how
the work should continue. However, these issues
were resolved in the other JSDL sessions.
HPCBP
After the second successful HPC Profile
interoperability fest at SuperComputing '07, the
HPCBP group held a session on specification
adoption. This session outlined the history of HPCBP,
through the work of JSDL, BES and finally HPCBP.
This clearly showed the significance of the work in
which Dr McGough had been involved through
efforts in JSDL and BES, and the uptake within the
community, as the presentations highlighted both
industrial implementations of these specifications, as
well as those from research groups such as Dr
McGough's team.
The HPCP-WG continued improving the
specifications of the extensions to the basic profile.
Since the integrated HPCP support in GridSAM was
one of the early implementations of the profile, Dr
McGough and Mr Novov had participated regularly at
the WG's weekly conference calls as well as all OGF
working sessions.
activities) expanded the basic filtering by allowing for
scoping based on UserName, Owner, State etc. An
HPCP implementation may not support the AFP, but
must return UnsupportedFeatureFault if it
doesn't. The proposed Advance Filter (for resources)
expanded the basic filtering by returning available
resources in per-resource-type records rather than
per-resource-instance records. A particular issue was
raised about the use of String-based jobIDs in the
returned data of the AFP calls. The jobID was
returned inside EPRs and the EPRs were opaque to
the user. (The jobID value format, as well as its
placement within the EPR, is service-specific).
Application Template (AT)
The purpose of the AT was to simplify the job
submission with JSDL documents, so that the user
would not need to specify every detail, executable,
parameters etc, when submitting a job. However,
there needed to be a way of discovering the ATs
available at given HPCP service end point. The
proposed way was to use an
ApplicationTemplates element in
GetFactoryAttribtesDocument return doc.
containing multiple JSDLApplication elements
providing the ApplicationName, ApplicationVersion
and Description values.
A point for further discussion was the fact that as
proposed the AT’s names were not portable among
HPCBP endpoints, to use an AT, a client would
provide a jsdl:ApplicationName (optional
jsdl:ApplicationVersion) element and could
specify jsdl:JobIdentification,
jsdl:DataStaging elements; jsdl:Resources
elements that were over-ridden by the AT. The
precedence of HPC application values after the HPCP
endpoint applied an AT to a submitted JSDL is predefined. Some of the values would be replaced by
values defined in the AT, but others would be added.
Another potential problem that the group needed to
address was the 'silent' replacement of JSDL values
supplied by the user which clash with values defined
in the ATs. A possible solution was the use of a set of
faults used to notify the user what exactly was/was
not accepted.
File Staging Profile (FSP)
•
Advanced Filter Profile (AFP)
•
Application Template (AT)
The FSP was one of the first extensions to the basic
HPC profile and, given the fair amount of work that
the WG has put into it, had reached a more mature
stage. The profile was moved to public comment
period from 4 -11 Feb '08 but this period was
extended. The profile, as it stood, was based on the
DataStaging Element in JSDL v1.0 with the addition
of a 'Credential' element, specification of a narrow set
of supported protocols, discovery mechanism
through BESExtension element and file staging
failure exceptions.
•
File Staging Profile (FSP)
Kerberos Authentication
The following three extensions underwent revisions:
At the OGF22 group session, the discussion focused
on the latest state of these documents and a review of
the work completed in the months after SC07.
Advance Filter Profile (AFP)
The purpose of the AFP was to define a functionality
for scoping the data returned by calls to
GetFactoryAttributesDocument(). The current
returned document definition allowed basic filtering
by simple inclusion or exclusion of given activities
and resources. The proposed Advance Filter (for
Along with the review of the three HPC profile
extensions, much of the session discussion focused
on the need for support of Kerberos Authentication
within the Credential element of the File Staging
profile. This particular requirement was coming from
users of vendors implementing the HPCP. There
seemed to be a large user base using Kerberos as
authN mechanism, single-sign-on services built on
top of Kerberos, and/or a large number of batch
system relying on Kerberos credentials. In addition to
authN of services, the delegation of access rights was
seen as an issue to be addressed. Kerberos authN
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3.25 Dr Stephen McGough – Imperial
mechanism was simple and well understood;
however, it is usually non-trivial to implement and
program for.
HPCBP Developments and GridSAM
One of the latest developments within the WG would
likely affect the current plans for the next GridSAM
release. There was a proposal from the GenesisII
team with respect to integrating the task of
application deployment within a BES endpoint
functionality. It had been the team's experience that
the use of the jsdl:DataStaging element for
staging executables and configuration files was
inefficient and didn't scale. The team's evaluation of
the CDDLM and some other similar deployment
mechanisms found them to be too complex. The
evaluation process found that most of the use cases
involve a transferring and unpacking zipped binary
executable and/or configuration files. The proposed
solution would introduce a new deployment
descriptor element of the JSDL document and let the
BES endpoint handle this task. GridSAM had
supported the staging of input/output files as part of
a computational job processing since its inception.
Should this new proposal be accepted and become
officially a part of the JSDL standard, GridSAM was
in a position to become one of the first BES endpoints
to provide such application deployment functionality.
OGSA Info
The OGSA Information Model was close to
submission and contained significant input from the
JSDL group, both in terms of the new matching of
resources and jobs paradigm and the development of
XQuery interactions on the documents.
OGSA EMS
The OGSA EMS specification was further discussed.
CDDLM was being removed from the specification,
where appropriate, and file staging and resource
selection was being extended. This fitted in nicely
with the work Dr McGough and Mr Novov were doing
with GridSAM and GridBS and they were
participating in the OGSA EMS effort with their
experiences from this work.
Cloud Computing
An open BoF session was held on Cloud Computing
and how this fitted into the OGF model. There were a
number of presentations about different Cloud
implementations and how these were partly Grids
and partly something at a higher level. The general
consensus from the session was that Cloud
computing was a higher level above the Grid – more
the interface rather than the “how it works”. The
feeling was that Cloud computing was relevant for
OGF although, at present, this was not an area that
OGF could standardise. The work that Dr McGough
and Mr Novov had been doing on JSDL, BES and
GridSAM, however, seemed quite in line with the
Cloud model as they provided an interface for
submission which could be used with the Cloud.
GSA-RG
The Grid Scheduling Architecture group was working
towards interoperability in and between scheduling
services on the Grid. They sought to take JSDL
documents, along with scheduling documents, to
select the appropriate BES instance to deploy a job to.
If in the case the scheduler can’t find a suitable BES
instance, it can communicate with other schedulers
Page 122
to find a resource. Through Dr McGough and Mr
Novov’s work on GridSAM and GridBS, they were
able to contribute their experience of these scenarios
back to the group.
GRAAP-WG
The GRAAP group had two implementations of
services for submitting jobs through WS-Agreement
which were able to interoperate. There was, however,
much concern during their session that what they had
implemented was far more complex than merely
implementing an interoperation for WS-Agreement.
Their implementations both relied on JSDL, among
other specifications, and although this was good from
the JSDL group’s point of view, as they were
effectively providing another two implementations
and showing interoperation of JSDL for the group,
there was concern that this would not help others
wishing to implement WS-Agreement for other use
cases.
OGSA Authz-WG
Due to Dr McGough and Mr Novov’s ongoing
development of the OMII Authorisation project, they
had been closely following the Authz WG's and other
Grid security-related activities in the last few OGFs.
Dr McGough and Mr Novov’s design was based in
large part on the proposed OGSA Authz architecture.
The latest changes and the current state of this
architecture were reviewed, as well as the
recommendation of removing the OGSA acronym
from the official specification title. The architecture
and its document were deemed to be complete and
ready to be moved to public comment phase.
The proposed XACML profile was also reviewed. The
profile would be stripped of some now-mandatory
attributes passed between Policy Enforcement Point
(PEP) and Policy Decision Point (PDP). The
attributes were to be moved to the appendix and
made optional. So far only one team had completed a
reference implementation and published experience
and test results. Support for XACML had been
considered as part of Dr McGough and Mr Novov’s
OMII Authorisation development effort and it was
quite likely such support would be introduced in
future releases.
The group also discussed the SAML profile, paying
particular attention to definitions for attributes to
express VO-related data, such as cross-organisational
groups and roles. However, an issue was raised that
this particular profile/document type fell outside the
charter of the Authz WG. Since there had been an
administrative decision to close this WG, the
document's future remained uncertain. One
proposed solution was to submit a new charter
document along with the proposed profile by
interested parties. If, however, this approach was to
be undertaken, there would have to be a careful
consideration of the amount of work needed to bring
the profile to a final state.
On the issue of closing the WG, the timely submission
of the Authz architecture, XACML and WS-Trust
documents for public comment period should allow
for enough time for any comment/suggestions to be
addressed and any relevant changes incorporated
into the final official versions. The tentative deadline
for this should be the OGF in Barcelona where the
last OGSA Authz WG meeting is scheduled. Any
outstanding concerns raised afterwards were to be
resolved by following the relevant OGF mechanism in
practice.
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.25 Dr Stephen McGough – Imperial
3.25.10 OGSA F2F (12)
•
Different application types (java, SQL, parallel)
Dr McGough attended the OGGSA F2F (12) meeting
held on 15-19 August 2005, in Sunnyvale, California.
His main areas of focus were as follows:
•
Job instance information
•
Quality of Service
•
OGSA-BES
•
Parametric jobs
•
OGSA-RSS
•
Variables
•
JSDL
•
Workflow
•
OGSA Resource Model
•
Job preferences
After the first JSDL F2F meeting, it was discovered
that there was a significant cross over between the
JSDL attendees and the OGSA attendees. It was
therefore determined that holding the JSDL working
group F2F meetings as part of the OGSA F2F
meetings was more appropriate.
•
Security
During this F2F meeting, there was significant
discussion of the RM (Resource Model) specification
work. This was highly significant to the JSDL effort
because the resource model currently described
within JSDL is crude and basic, awaiting a more
complete model. This allowed Dr McGough to help
steer the effort of the RM team to those beneficial for
JSDL, GridSAM and the UK e-Science community in
general. Further discussion of the BES specification
helped to iron out problems within the state model,
thereby simplifying it. The OGSA RSS group are
defining how to select resources to use within the
Grid, which relates closely in with both the RM and
JSDL efforts.
Both of these areas were relevant from Dr McGough’s
work on GridSAM.
A breakout session was held for those interested in
JSDL where a roadmap was developed as to how to
progress JSDL post version 1.0. This session included
extensions for parallel jobs, parametric jobs, job
templates and other application types (for example,
database queries).
3.25.11 OGSA F2F (13)
Dr McGough attend the OGSA F2F (13) held on 16-20
January 2006 in Sunnyvale, CA.
The main areas of focus were as follows:
•
BES
•
JSDL
•
EMS
The JSDL 1.0 specification was published just before
this F2F meeting. This placed JSDL as a
recommended specification which was a significant
accomplishment for the work of the group.
Within the OGSA F2F meeting, there was a JSDL
breakout session in which the group discussed the
future of JSDL and in which areas the group wished
to progress in the future. The group identified a
number of key areas for which the group had received
significant requests from the wider community,
including members of the UK community. These
issues included:
•
Data model
•
How to deal with extensions
•
Partial data staging
The sessions also covered developing the BES
specification and the EMS architecture, where
discussion focused on which services talked to each
other and which languages were used.
3.25.12 OGSA F2F (14)
Dr McGough attended the OGSA F2F (14) held on 4-7
April 2006.
His main areas of focus were as follows:
•
HPC Profile
•
EMS
•
CDDLM
•
Information Model
At this F2F meeting, new effort was emerging in the
area of interoperation. There was much interest in
producing a High Performance Computing Profile of
both the JSDL and BES work to allow large scale
clusters to be exposed and interoperated between.
From the previous work on JSDL, BES and GridSAM
Dr McGough was ideally positioned to contribute
fully in this area. The idea of this work was to
condense these specifications into a profile that most
projects could implement in time for
Supercomputing 06 in November. As GridSAM had
already implemented JSDL and BES, this made Dr
McGough’s situation much simpler because OGSA
already had full functionality. The organisations and
projects involved in this effort included Microsoft,
Platform and EGEE, which again showed the rapid
take-up of the JSDL and BES standards.
In the EMS sessions there was discussion of how to
extend JSDL to work within the EMS architecture.
The CDDLM session contained discussion of how to
merge CDL (the language used to describe what
needs to be deployed) and JSDL. The idea was to
merge elements of JSDL and CDL to make a more
complete deployment and execution language.
Within the Information Modelling sessions there was
discussion of how to map JSDL resource elements
into the CIM model space and vice versa. This also
led to a discussion of what needed to be extended
within JSDL.
3.25.13 OGSA F2F (15)
Dr McGough attended the OGSA F2F (15) held on 1720 July 2006, at Argonne National Labs in Illinois.
His main areas of focus were as follows:
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3 GridNet2 Reports
3.25 Dr Stephen McGough – Imperial
•
Information Model
•
HPC Profile
•
BES
•
EMS
•
CDDLM
At this F2F meeting, there was an emergent new
theme about how data (information) should be
modelled. This was the idea that for all services and
consumers, each should not only have requirements
of what they require, but also information about what
they provide. This was very much akin to the
approach taken within the Condor ClassAds
language. Thus resources had capabilities and
requirements of users, and users of a service had
requirements and capabilities, such as identity of the
user and what characteristics they possess. This fitted
in well with JSDL and the plans for future
development. But more importantly, this fitted in
strongly with the work that Dr McGough had been
doing within the OGF, as it was working on an XML
version of Condor ClassAds which brought Dr
McGough to the position of starting work on a job
description language in the first place, having indepth knowledge of this area. The approach proposed
would be to adopt more modern realisation of the
language, using such tooling as XQuery and/or
XPath, and rendering the document within XML.
There was much discussion as to whether a strongly
XML typed language would be preferable to a more
weakly typed XML language where the strong typing
of XML is not used.
This new information model plan fed into the JSDL
session in which it was decided to adopt a
requirements and capabilities approach for the
upcoming JSDL 2.0 work. This would allow for
two-way matching within a (less basic) BES service
and cater for the resource’s requirements as well as
the users. This would require the use of either a more
inelegant BES service or a broker service as an
intermediary. From his work with GridSAM and prior
work with the Condor matchmaker, Dr McGough was
able to make significant input into this discussion.
Other issues which were discussed for the process of
moving from JSDL 1.0 to 2.0 included:
•
Moving items around the document to make it
more about “what needs to be done” rather than
“how to do it”
•
References between documents to reduce
repeating common elements
•
The reification of JSDL documents from abstract
to more concrete, which was something that
users of GridSAM had at times desired
The BES team had decided to postpone the
Information Model of the BES container as this had
become a blocking item for the progress of BES.
Work would progress without this, using a very
simple model instead, until such time as an
information model became more mature. This was of
some relief to Dr McGough as GridSAM already used
a simple model which he had found sufficient for
GridSAM’s users.
Discussion also focused on the state model and how
to deal with multiple invocations (nested or parallel).
Page 124
The HPCP group presented a set of requirements
over the BES and JSDL specifications which were
blockers for the HPCP interoperation event. These
included the removal of file staging for this iteration
(as few projects could implement these in time), the
removal of POSIX requirements on job submissions
(so that Windows could be used) and the
simplification of the BES state model. These issues
were discussed and resolved. This again showed the
significant impact of the JSDL and BES work on OGF
and the importance of the group’s effort in this
regard.
The EMS architecture scenarios were discussed and
improved upon and the CDDLM group discussed how
to perform POSIX deployments with JSDL.
3.25.14 OGSA F2F (17)
Dr McGough attended the OGSA F2F (17). The main
areas of focus were as follows:
•
JSDL
•
Information Model
•
Interoperability
•
Security
•
QoS
•
Workflow
JSDL
At this OGSA F2F meeting, there was a JSDL session
to investigate further ideas about JSDL 2.0, as
discussed at the last OGF meeting. The ideas of pre
and post conditions in a JSDL document were
discussed along with the capabilities and
requirements that a job would have to enable
matching with resources. Concern was raised over
pre and post conditions being a back-door route to
allowing workflows. The aim of this session was also
to determine how JSDL 2.0 would be specified, and
its relationship to other groups in OGF. Dr McGough
was able to contribute extensively to this session as it
not only involves one of the groups that his team are
most active within, but also allowed them to feed in
requirements from the UK community. It was
decided that the group should proceed on two tracks.
The first was to develop extensions to JSDL 1.0 which
can be used now, and the second was to draft up a
JSDL 2.0 specification skeleton to allow development
of some of these ideas.
Information Model
The Information Model had changed somewhat since
the last session at OGF19. The GLUE schema had
been brought into the OGF standards body and, as
such, there was much interest in working with this.
The GLUE and BES specifications had been taken as
a starting point for work in developing the
Information Model and this was presented as the
starting point for the model.
There was some concern over starting from GLUE
although as it had been used in many Grid instances
for some time now, this was as good a point to start
from as any. As this related mostly to computational
(BES) jobs, it was useful to take part in this session as
Dr McGough was able to feed the requirements from
GridSAM into this work.
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.25 Dr Stephen McGough – Imperial
Interoperability
3.25.15 OGSA F2F (18)
There was much discussion within both OGSA and
OGF on the issues of interoperability. During this
F2F meeting, the areas in which interoperability
through standards could be achieved were discussed,
and a list of projects which would be able to take part
in interoperation tests was constructed. This enabled
Dr McGough to propose GridSAM and other
UK-based projects for these interoperation tests.
Dr McGough and Mr Novov attended the OGSA F2F
(18). Their main areas of focus were as follows:
•
Information Modelling
•
AuthN
•
EMS Scenario
Security
•
JSDL
One of the main areas which had still to achieve any
significant standardisation within the Grid
community was that of security. There were many
groups working in this area although, at the time,
there was little in the way of standards and
interoperation. This was borne out by the recent HPC
profile interoperations performed at SC06. The
proposal was to define a simple security specification
where complex issues such as delegation and
authentication were not addressed, and in general, to
leave out all the controversial issues which were
preventing standardisation. This was good as far as
Dr McGough’s work on GridSAM was concerned as
GridSAM used a simple security model that was
similar to the one proposed for this work. As the
GridSAM security model was that of the main OMII
container, this was useful for the work of OMII in
general, and Dr McGough was able to help scope out
what this work should be.
•
Workflow
•
Service Level Terms
QoS
In a follow-up to the QoS BoF held at the last OGF,
Dr McGough was involved in running a QoS session
at the OGSA F2F meeting. In terms of what the group
was doing, it seemed as though SLA was more
appropriate than QoS. The feeling was that if the
group has continuous parameters, this would lead to
too much choice at this stage and be too complex to
deal with. The idea of the photo processing lab
options (1 hour, 1 day, or 1 week) or the MacDonald’s
menu approach would be easier to deal with at
present. Though constraints (such as price) needed to
be placed on these as otherwise everyone would ask
for the “best” option all of the time. Although this did
not fit directly in with what had been done in the
GRIDCC project, it did have much more traction for
standardisation, and as such, Dr McGough was able
to contribute to this work.
Workflow
To continue the workflow efforts from the previous
OGF, the group discussed the use of workflow
languages such as BPEL. There was concern within
the group about BPEL issues such as workflows being
unchangeable once deployed, and workflows not
being first class entities. Dr McGough was able to
describe work that he had done through the GRIDCC
project to alleviate the unchangeable nature of BPEL
documents by changing endpoints dynamically. The
general feeling was that OGSA should focus on
ensuring that the architecture was easy to use for
workflows and that the group could not, at this stage,
rule out the need to write their own workflow
language until they hadgathered information on
existing workflow languages and the use of these.
This was something Dr McGough was able to
contribute to through his work on GRIDCC, and
through using GridSAM as part of a workflow system.
Information Modelling
In the Information Modelling session, a discussion
was held as to how the CIM, DM and GLUE models
interact with each other; the JSDL specification and
the BES model were also part of this discussion. The
relationship between these entities was defined and
discussion ensued as to how entities such as jobs and
resources could be brought together. This led onto a
discussion as to how JSDL 2.0 could be developed to
have capabilities and requirements which would
match with similar capabilities and requirements of
the resource. It was decided that the requirements
could be defined into two parts actual requirements
and ranking/preferences. It was felt that, at the
current stage, it would be best to limit this just to the
actual requirements and that ranking of the possible
matches could be done at a later stage. The idea of
two-way matching (where both the consumer and
provider have requirements which are adhered to) as
opposed to one-way matching was discussed. Again
the idea was to start with one-way matching as this
would be simpler. The discussion moved onto how to
achieve this with XQuery being proposed as a prime
candidate. The consensus was that JSDL should work
on its extension for matching using XQuery as a testcase for this approach. This was an interesting
session from both a JSDL point of view, as Dr
McGough and Mr Novov were significant players in
the session, but also for GridSAM because this was an
area where they would be developing GridSAM.
AuthN
The AuthN group had encountered the problem that
most organisations and companies had already
implemented their own security infrastructure, and
as such, were unlikely to change this in the short term
(if at all). This made the chance for easy
interoperation slight. This was a major problem for
Grid adoption, because without a common security
model, interoperation at any other level causes
difficulties. Work was ongoing to see if a common
“simple” case can be defined.
EMS Scenarios
The EMS scenarios document had been published but
it was outdated because it was based on old versions
of some of the specifications and some specifications
did not seem to be active any more. The original
document focused on job submission (BES/JSDL)
and the deployment of software using CDDLM.
However, CDDLM had not been adopted within the
community, because, in many cases, it was
considered too complex to implement. As such, the
intention was to revise the document to take account
of HPCP and replace CDDLM with other standards
where ones exist, or at least provide examples of
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3.25 Dr Stephen McGough – Imperial
simple ways to do this, such as transferring a zip (tar)
file to the endpoint and expanding it before executing
the code. This also required the addition of file
staging scenarios within the document. Other
changes would include update of the Resource
Selection Service text and revision of the Information
Service in light of the recent changes. This was
significant work for Dr McGough and Mr Novov, due
to their work with BES and JSDL, and also as these
scenarios match closely the scenarios provided in
GridSAM already. This further showed the major
uptake of their work with JSDL/BES within other
standards groups.
JSDL
For the JSDL session, most of the discussion
continued from the themes in the previous sessions.
As the work for JSDL was becoming integral to the
overall OGSA architecture, it was difficult to isolate
this work to just its own session. The group had
managed to resolve 24 out of the 29 open issues for
the JSDL 1.0 errata document and it was hoped to be
able to publish this document soon. For the
requirements specification, there would be a close
synergy with the work happening in the OGSA-RSS
group. As such, effort from the JSDL group would go
towards helping finish the OGSA-RSS specification.
Work on the XQuery prototyping was progressing
well and examples are being generated.
Workflow
At the previous OGF it was decided that the OGSA
design team on workflow would conduct a survey of
existing uses of workflow. In this session, the group
discussed the possible scenarios for which they would
ask questions and what the group intended to do with
the answers once they had them. It was proposed that
the group should focus on Web Services-based
workflow systems as opposed to just any workflow
systems. However, for JSDL many underlying
systems used workflows which are not Web Services.
The conclusion was to make a spreadsheet of known
workflow systems and contact users and developers
to fill out the details for the systems they know.
Service Level Terms
In the Service Level Terms session, the group
followed up the BoF held at the previous OGF
meeting. It was felt that the best approach would be
to offer different tiers of support based on what the
user was willing to “pay” for - such as Bronze, Silver
and Gold. These would be pre-defined tiers that the
user would select. This work did not seem ready for
standardisation yet, though this information needed
to be captured for future use. Again this was relevant
for the work Dr McGough and Mr Novov were doing
with GridSAM.
3.25.16 OGSA F2F (19)
Dr McGough and Mr Novov attended the OGSA F2F
(19). Their main areas of focus were as follows:
•
OGSA-DMI
•
OGSA EMS
•
OGSA Strategy
•
Info/data modelling architecture
•
Basic Security Profile
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•
Service Level Terms
Imperial College, London hosted this OGSAF2F
meeting. Imperial were able to provide a venue
suitable for the meeting, along with refreshments,
thanks to the support from GridNet2.
OGSA-DMI
The OGSA-DMI session focused on the use of Data
EPRs (DEPRs). These would not fit within the
current URI elements for source and target within a
JSDL document, although because a JSDL source
and target has an xsd:any, it could be placed within
that. There is also a problem with EPRs, in general,
that when they are modified, all the security is lost
due to the hashing of the EPR becoming invalid.
However, there was space within a DEPR to put
security credentials. This was an xsd:any, and
although it was possible to just place a security
attribute, it was probably better to leave this as such.
The consensus was to submit the document for public
comment. This work was significant for JSDL as it
provided a new and more appropriate way to transfer
files and again showed how pervasive JSDL had
become in the wider community. This was also
significant for GridSAM as it was something that
GridSAM was likely to require.
OGSA EMS
For OGSA EMS scenarios, the question was what to
focus on beyond the basic scenarios. Some of the
possible contenders for extension are file transfer,
advanced filtering, Kerberos security, Info Modelling
and accounting. It was proposed to scope just the
things that could be done with the HPCB Profile,
though some people felt this to be too constraining.
There was discussion about file staging and using
OGSA-DMI, although there was still concern about
DEPRs (see above). Security was also a problem.
Because the people running CDDLM were no longer
active within OGF and everyone who had evaluated
CDDLM felt that it was too complex to implement, it
was dropped from the next version of the document.
The EMS work was also highly relevant for Dr
McGough and Mr Novov’s work on GridSAM and the
future development of JSDL.
Due to internal reviews held within OGF, there was
much refocusing within the OGSA group which led to
an OGSA Strategy session. The feeling within the
community (from a yet to be published survey for
OGF) was that most people in OGF were developers
(e-Scientists) and not users, and security was
becoming a key problem. At present, no real progress
had been made, because over the last four years
OGF/OGSA had focused on low level specifications.
The group needed to move on from this and move
development up through the stack and add in
security. There was much discussion about providing
higher level APIs that programmers could use
(possibly SAGA). There was also discussion of a move
towards access layers and service layers and how
existing standards can be used together. Further
discussion covered the emerging cloud technologies
and how these relate to OGF/OGSA. There was a
proposal to focus more on the clients – browser (Web
2.0), traditional OS, APIs, APIs for clouds, and
mashup technologies. This discussion was highly
interesting and something that Dr McGough could
contribute towards as his work had moved already
towards internet (client) types of technologies.
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.25 Dr Stephen McGough – Imperial
The Information/Data Modelling Architecture
document is now almost complete. The new section
within the document was provided by the JSDL
group to define how requirement matching would be
provided through future versions of JSDL. This was
to be done through the use of XQuery, though it was
asked if XPath would be sufficient. This was to be
evaluated. The need for optionality, weighting and
preference were also discussed and would feed into
the next version of JSDL. It was also noted that
hierarchies would be needed as, for example, a
system responding as a “RedHat” OS should be able
to match a job requesting OS of “Unix”. This work
was highly relevant for Dr McGough’s work on JSDL
as it would feed into the JSDL requirements
extension and JSDL 2.0.
to a much wider community. As this was a large
event, they were able to bring people onto the stand
who had seen the HPCP demos on other stands and
were keen to know what Dr McGough’s team had
achieved.
Basic Security Profile
Thus, GridSAM would be one of the first full
implementations of this OGF-endorsed standard,
which should greatly enhance the chances for a wider
adoption of GridSAM by the Grid community and
easier integration with other Grid-based middleware
systems.
The Basic Security Profile was now finished and
rendered the OGSA Security Profile 1.0 obsolete.
There was discussion on who would implement this
work. GridSAM was one contender.
Service Level Terms
For the Service Level Terms work, it was decided that
there was not enough consensus to standardise
anything as yet and this design team has been left to
rest.
3.25.17 SuperComputing ‘06 and
OGSA F2F (16)
The paramount reason for Dr McGough and Mr
Novov to attend this event was to take part in the
OGSA HPCP interoperation event at
Supercomputing. This event brought the following
ten independent implementations of the HPCP
profile on JSDL and BES together to demonstrate
interoperation in action:
•
University of Virginia
•
Microsoft
•
Platform Computing
•
Globus
•
Unicore
•
Genesis II
•
OMII-UK/GridSAM
•
CROWN
•
gLite WMProxy
•
gLite CREAM
This was a highly significant event for all three
groups as it showed not only that the standards had
reached a certain level of maturity, but also a
significant uptake within the wider community. This
was highly relevant work for Dr McGough and Mr
Novov, as not only were they providing one of the
implementations but it was also the culmination of a
significant amount of their effort. They were able to
interoperate with all but one of the other projects
(which also had significant problems interoperating
with others). Dr McGough and Mr Novov were
showcasing their software on the UK e-Science stand,
which allowed them to present GridSAM, along with
the work that they have been doing within the OGF,
The success of this interoperability demonstration is
likely to influence the future development plans for
GridSAM. The required functionality tested at the
event comprised only a subset of the full capabilities
provided by GridSAM interface. Subsequent
development of the HPCP Interface to provide more
comprehensive facilities would likely result in
morphing of the two and possible future versions of
GridSAM offering a full support for the officially
standardised HPC Profile.
During the OGSA F2F meeting, progress was made
with the new approach to resource matching with
ClassAds-like documents. Work was made on
evaluating XQuery as a language to perform this. Dr
McGough and Mr Novov were able to feed into this
work through prior experience from GridSAM and
their work with ClassAds in the past.
There was a discussion about how to extend JSDL
towards JSDL 2.0 in the JSDL session. This included
a presentation from IBM on how JSDL could be
included within a BPEL document to use it as part of
workflows. This showed how JSDL was being taken
seriously by the wider community. This was also
relevant as Dr McGough and Mr Novov had
themselves used GridSAM as a service within a BPEL
document.
3.25.18 SuperComputing ‘07
Dr McGough and Mr Novov attended
SuperComputing 07 (SC07). Their main areas of
focus were as follows:
•
GridSAM
•
OGSA HPCP interoperability
The SC07 convention was again used by the
HPCP-WG as a staging ground for a second
demonstration of interoperability among a number of
prototype implementations of the HPC Basic Profile
(HPCBP) v1.0 specification.
At the previous year’s event, several groups managed
to demonstrate a successful interoperation among
different job scheduling platforms through the use of
a common interface: the initial draft of the HPCBP.
In the year after the event, taking into account the
participants' experiences and incorporating viable
solutions for the issues encountered, the HPCP-WG
refined the Basic Profile and the specification was
published as a draft recommendation version 1.0.
Relying on the success of the event from the previous
year, several engineering teams used the SC07 show
floor to set a follow-up demonstration of the
improved HPCBP. The second year again brought
together a mix of representatives from academia and
industry as follows:
•
Altair Engineering
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3.26 Dr Andrew Martin – Oxford
•
Microsoft
•
Platform Computing
•
NorduGrid
•
University of Virginia e-Science Group
•
GridSAM/OMII-UK
•
EGEE/OMII-Europe.
The tested back-end platforms were based on a
number of different technologies:
•
Windows OS
•
Various version of Linux OS
•
Java
•
C++
•
C#
•
Axis
•
gSOAP
•
XFire
•
Windows Compute Cluster
•
PBS
•
LSF
•
SGE
•
Torque
•
ARC
•
CREAM
•
Globus
Despite the heterogeneity, with the use of their
respective implementations of the refined HPCBP
v1.0, the teams again succeeded in submitting,
monitoring, querying and controlling the test suites
of computational jobs. What was more, for this
second interoperability test, a few of the participants,
including GridSAM, University of Virginia, Microsoft
and Platform Computing, had enhanced the
functionality of their implementations to provide
support for two newly proposed extensions of the
Basic Profile:
•
File Staging
The File Staging specification, based mainly on
the Data Staging element in JSDL v1.0, provided
a 'common denominator' protocol for
transferring input/output data files as part of a
job processing.
•
Activity Credential
The Activity Credential extension provided a
standard way of supplying security credentials
necessary for a cross-organisational launching of
executables and/or staging of files.
Out of that smaller group of four, GridSAM was one
of the more mature platforms with previous
experience with JSDL's Data Staging and security
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credentials processing. That previous experience was
invaluable in resolving the various problems
occurring during the testing.
After the event, each team's experience was
documented, along with the workable solutions of the
problems encountered. Through the continued work
of the HPCP-WG, where GridSAM team had regular
participation, the two extension specifications were
brought to the public comment phase of the
standardisation process. Likewise, the overall success
and experience of the SC07 Interop-fest would likely
help the HPCBP v1.0 become a full OGF standard.
Some time after the event, a couple of the industry
participants announced their plans for integration of
their HPCBP implementations into their respective
upcoming product releases. Knowing for a fact that
the GridSAM's HPCBP support had tested
successfully with these commercial products, Dr
McGough and Mr Novov could now be even more
confident about the GridSAM project's potential for
its wider acceptance. There had been already
concrete plans for the integration of the GridSAM
HPCBP-related functionality within the GridBS
project. It would be also likely that much of the
experience of the GridSAM team gained through
involvement with the HPCBP-WG and OGF activities
would apply towards the successful completion of the
GridBS project.
3.26
Dr Andrew Martin –
Oxford
Dr Andrew Martin is a lecturer and deputy director of
the software engineering programme at the
University of Oxford.
This report also covers Mr Andrew Cooper’s
GridNet2-funded activities. Mr Andrew Cooper is a
DPhil student and programme researcher in the
software engineering programme at the University of
Oxford.
For summaries of the GridNet2 activities covered by
this award, see the following sections:
•
Section 2.8, Mr Andrew Cooper – Oxford
•
Section 2.26, Dr Andrew Martin – Oxford
3.26.1
GGF15
Dr Martin attended GGF15.
TC-RG
TC-RG began with a BoF at GGF-13, and had been
properly inaugurated at GGF-14. This was, then, the
first meeting with progress to report.
The group was chartered to produce two deliverables,
representing the overlapping interests of its two
chairs. Martin is the editor of a document recording
use cases for trusted computing in Grids contexts,
and Wenbo Mao is leading an architecture and
implementation project to deliver trusted computing
functionality which interoperates, or naturally
extends, existing Grid solutions.
The discussion at GGF14 had set out some
requirements on the use case document; namely, that
it should structure the use cases under a small
number of headings, relative to the obvious,
immediate benefits of the use of TC. Through the
group mailing list, other people contributed some of
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.26 Dr Andrew Martin – Oxford
these which were already in progress. Since many
GGF groups were producing and discussing use
cases, their output would also be surveyed for
relevant interactions with TC ideas. Use cases would
be documented relative to the threat or opportunity
they addressed.
Little input on the use cases had occurred on the
mailing list in the interim, so in preparation for the
GGF-15 meeting, Dr Martin had produced a
document, based mainly on his own ideas and those
of Wenbo Mao, with place-holders for other use cases
proposed by interested parties at the original BoF.
The document was not ready to be uploaded in
advance of GGF-15, so it was described rather than
available for advance discussion.
The use cases identified were:
1. Server Credential Storage
2. Centralised user credential storage
3. Secure data isolation
4. Process isolation (sandboxing)
5. Trusted information services
6. Distributed firewall; application-aware firewall
7. Secured Audit/Logging Service
The discussion indicated that the use cases should
represent a spectrum from straightforward easy gains
through more innovative examples. This was not
because novelty is good per se, but because this
technology had the potential to allow big classes of
application which had simply been impossible in the
past. Genuinely improved functionality (where
needed) was worth exploring.
resulting document – the first full draft of the use
case document – was uploaded to GridForge before
Christmas.
Dr Martin and Mr Cooper attended GGF-16 to
present and discuss this document. As usual, the
TC-RG meeting also included a report and
subsequent discussion from Wenbo Mao on the
progress of his Daonity architecture and
implementation. A full architecture draft document
was complete in time for GGF-16 and was uploaded
to GridForge. The progress of the group was
therefore tangible, with two public draft documents.
The draft use case document was met with
enthusiasm by the relatively small TC-RG meeting.
The progress was acknowledged, and the lack of
further input regretted. The area directors
encouraged the TC-RG to progress the document
through the GGF process so that it would perhaps
receive further input and comment, and also so that it
might reach a wider audience. This was to happen as
soon as possible.
Ad Hoc BoF on Virtualization
It became clear that Trusted Computing alone was
too low level a technology to address many
application issues by itself. Techniques for system
virtualisation (such as Xen, VMWare, VirtualPC, etc.)
provided a natural partnering for enhanced trust in
applications and middleware infrastructure. The
same techniques were also gaining popularity for
Grid job management, partitioning of tasks on
Campus Grid nodes, and so on. Though it was
premature to consider standardisation in this area, it
was clearly important that those pursuing different
aims through this technology were aware of each
other. As a result, Dr Martin organised a BoF on this
subject.
There was some synergy with the activities of the
Firewall Issues Research Group (FI-RG). Leon
Gommans had been looking at the Trusted
Computing Group's Trusted Network Connect
specification and expects to explore this within the
FI-RG, since it potentially offered a means for
providing ad hoc access through firewalls, as needed
for applications like GridFTP.
The BoF attracted a good level of attendance,
including quite a number of area directors. Speakers
included:
The meeting also heard a report from Wenbo Mao on
progress with the architecture and implementation
project.
•
Andy Cooper, Virtualisation and the Grid
•
Wenbo Mao, Secure Virtualisation with Trusted
Computing
•
David Wallom, Virtualisation in Campus Grids
•
Comment by Rhys Francis, who described the
Australian Grid virtualised gateway using Xen to
run different middleware stacks to support a wide
range of users.
•
Reference was also made to virtualisation
extensions to Globus Toolkit 4, which Ian Foster
had described in his keynote address.
•
Comment by Matt Viljoen, who described a
Rutherford Lab process for distributing client
Grid tools using a VM player.
Other Sessions
During GGF15, Dr Martin also attended and
contributed to meetings of the FI-RG, the OGSA-D
Security Discussion (wherein several use cases arose
which would be directly addressed by TC
technologies), the OGSA-Authz-WG, and a
community session on Leveraging Site
Infrastructure for Multi-Site Grids.
3.26.2
GGF16
Dr Martin and Mr Cooper attended GGF16.
TC-RG
At GFF-15, an outline for a use case document was
presented and discussed. A little further discussion
had occurred on the mailing list since then, and Mr
Cooper, who had been named on the original
GridNet2 funding proposal, contributed substantially
to the document in the last months of 2005. The
There was a good level of discussion, concluding that
two threads of activity should be taken forward:
•
Consideration (eventually towards
standardisation) of how virtualisation
technologies can be integrated with Grid
middleware to achieve the desirable outcomes
•
Community means of keeping in contact those
using these technologies in production Grids.
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3 GridNet2 Reports
3.27 Dr Steven Newhouse – OMII-UK
These will lead to further BoFs at future GGFs, in the
first instance.
beginning of an ongoing low-level engagement with
these activities.
Shibboleth and Grid
Note
An extended community activity reviewed existing
and possible projects integrating Shibboleth and Grid
technologies. Dr Martin attended and gave a
presentation on the ShibGrid project.
In parallel with Dr Martin’s booking and attending
this TCG meeting, the OGF area directors decided
that the TC-RG should be wound up, due to lack of
broad participation. Dr Martin expects the trusted
computing agenda to be pursued through the newlyformed research group on virtualisation (GRIDVIRTRG), which he helped to promote by running a BoF at
GGF16.
Other Sessions
Dr Martin and Mr Cooper attended other relevant
sessions at the GGF-15 meeting, including acting as
note-taker at the Authz interoperability meeting.
3.26.3
Trusted Computing
Group Meeting
Dr Martin attended the members meeting for the
Trusted Computing Group held on 14-16 November
2006 in San Antonio, Texas.
Preamble
Dr Martin’s GridNet2 proposal mainly covered
attendance at GGF meetings in order to advance the
work of the TC-RG of which he is co-chair. The
Trusted Computing Group (TCG) is the standards
body for Trusted Computing technologies, and runs
along similar lines to OGF, albeit with a closed
membership. Having obtained membership, Dr
Martin proposed that it would be helpful to attend a
TCG meeting in order to advance the goals of TC-RG,
in particular to share ideas and solicit contributions.
On this occasion, a time-slot became available which
allowed him to attend.
Sessions
Dr Martin attended the three-day meeting in San
Antonio. In particular, he attended a plenary tutorial
session, the opening plenary, with news of a TCG
collaboration with DMTF (which also collaborates
with OGF), and plenaries on Trusted Computing
Authentication technologies and protocols. He also
attended working group meetings on virtualisation,
authentication, server issues, and a joint working
group on enterprise storage and key management.
Each of those work group areas had a small
intersection with the work of TC-RG. Most of their
focus is on detailed low-level work which is outside
the scope of the Grid middleware he had been
considering. As such, he did not expect to be able to
contribute very much to their detailed work. It
became clear, however, that the Grid requirements
constitute a significantly different angle from most of
those already being considered. As such, he expects
to be able to contribute TC-RG Grid use cases to most
of those work groups, and this could be quite a
constructive way to encourage future releases of
technology to support Grid scenarios.
Dr Martin also held one-on-one chats with
representatives of Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, CESG,
The German Federal Information Ministry, Seagate,
Dartmouth College, and others, explaining his
interest in trusted Grid technologies. There was
much warm support – and surprise that TC-RG has
not attracted more active participants – but no direct
likelihood of additional input through OGF.
In summary, he judged his attendance to have been
worthwhile for the goals of GridNet2, and the
Page 130
3.27
Dr Steven
Newhouse – OMIIUK
Dr Steven Newhouse was the director of OMII-UK,
based at the University of Southampton. Dr
Newhouse did not use his entire GridNet2 award
before leaving OMII-UK, so his replacement, Mr Neil
Chue Hong, used the remainder in accordance with
the terms of Dr Newhouse’s original GridNet2
application.
For a summary of Dr Newhouse’s GridNet2 activities,
see section 2.27, Dr Steven Newhouse – OMII-UK.
3.27.1
GFSG F2F – Jan 06
The GFSG F2F meeting took place away from a GGF
meeting to allow more time for discussion and
planning as to the future of GGF. In addition to the
regular business of planning future events and
directions, the major upcoming issue was the
proposed merger of GGF and the EGA.
Dr Newhouse’s primary role in these meetings was to
represent the groups within the Applications
Standards area of GGF where he was one of the two
Area Directors. His primary concern at this meeting
was to ensure that the new organisation would
remain focused on the standards activity and that the
merger would have minimal disruption to this work.
3.27.2
OGSA F2F – Jan 06
To make progress on the standards work, it was
necessary to meet between the main GGF meetings.
The OGSA activity, which comprises several working
groups, met frequently between GGFs to discuss
technical issues in depth and to make further
progress on standards. Dr Newhouse was actively
engaged in the following segments of the meeting:
•
Basic Execution Service
There was a review and discussion of the current
draft specification.
•
Execution Management Services
There was continued brain storming and
definition of the incremental scenarios that
would be used to drive the definition of service
interfaces and their interactions in this part of
the OGSA model.
•
Information Model
There was a critical discussion, from the
perspective of job submission aspects, about
building a Grid infrastructure. The group further
refined the proposed CIM-based model so that
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.27 Dr Steven Newhouse – OMII-UK
the attributes focused on those relevant to the
e-Science community as opposed to device
manufacturers.
3.27.3
GGF16
within OMII-UK and the managed programme. There
were also several closed meetings with the OMII-UK
management team.
3.27.4
GGF17
Grid Forum Steering Group Meeting
Grid Forum Steering Group Meeting
There was an all-day meeting of the GGF Area
Directors and the GGF leadership to review and
discuss internal activity. This meeting was primarily
concerned with the progress of the merger with the
Enterprise Grid Alliance.
There was an all day meeting of the GGF Area
Directors and the GGF leadership to review and
discuss internal activity. This meeting was primarily
concerned with the continued progress of the merger
with the Enterprise Grid Alliance.
Grid Interoperability Now
High Performance Computing Profile
BoF
Following on from its initial meeting at
Supercomputing 2006 in Seattle, the GIN-CG held a
day-long workshop at GGF16. This meeting reviewed
the areas that had been set up following the initial
meeting: Jobs, Authorisation, and Data and
Information Services. This was the first opportunity
to have a F2F meeting to review progress. As the
coordinator of activity in the Jobs area, Dr Newhouse
provided an update of progress to date and future
plans to build islands of interoperation around
pre-WS-GRAM, WS-GRAM, and BES & JSDL.
OGSA Round Table
The OGSA-WG was planning its future strategy,
looking at which specifications to use to build the
OGSA architecture. During a round table session, Dr
Newhouse presented a strategy based on the
pragmatic use of web service specifications that have
been widely adopted. This was based upon the needs
of both OMII-UK and the UK e-Science programme.
Simple API for Grid Applications
Dr Newhouse reviewed the document and
contributed to the discussions relating to the
document that took place over several sessions.
Interoperability Fests BoF
One of the issues that was starting to face GGF was
how to verify implementations relating to the
specifications being developed by the working
groups. Various options were discussed but no
concrete actions came out of the meeting as no-one
present was willing to lead the activity.
Basic Execution Service Working
Group
This proposed activity built on two established
activities within the GGF – the Job Submission
Description Language (JSDL) and the Basic
Execution Service (BES). As groups started to
examine how to build on top of these specifications, it
was observed that additional constraints needed to be
defined, for example, security. A profile on these
specifications, that is, the set of additional constraints
needed for these specifications to be implemented,
had to be defined and this proposed working group
would undertake the work.
Astro-RG Workshop
This workshop aimed to build links between GGF
Standards groups and the domain specific
specifications being set in the Astronomy domain
through the International Virtual Observatory
Alliance. Dr Newhouse presented ongoing work in
the Applications Standards area (primarily the SAGA
activity) and how that was driving the development of
APIs that could protect application scientists from
changing services and interfaces when adopting Grid
infrastructures.
OGSA Execution Management
Services
An activity that Dr Newhouse had initiated at the
GGF15 meeting was to develop concrete use cases to
drive the specification of services in the EMS space.
This involved a review of the current document and
use cases. Feedback from the session identified where
use cases needed to be clarified and where new use
cases where needed. The document would continue
to be developed between GGF meetings.
Simple API for Grid Applications
As co-chair of the working group, Dr Newhouse led a
review of the latest draft of the specification and the
discussions that followed.
Dr Newhouse reviewed the document and
contributed to the discussions relating to the
document that took place over several sessions.
Applications Area Meeting
Bridging the Divide: Community
Application Requirements Driving
Standards Development
As one of the Area Directors for Applications
Standards, Dr Newhouse led this meeting that
reviewed activity taking place in the working and
research groups active in the area. The group decided
to plan a workshop for the next meeting that would
strengthen the links between activity in the
Applications area and other standards activity.
OMII-UK
Dr Newhouse ran a workshop describing the software
components being produced by the OMII-UK
consortium. Presentations were provided by partners
Dr Newhouse co-organised this workshop which was
designed to show case activities within the
Application Standards area to other working groups
in the standards functions and the broader GGF
community. The reason for this was to show that
some of the OGF API specifications were well on their
way to becoming standards and groups should
consider adopting them and contributing to the
activity by providing feedback.
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3.28 Mr Vesselin Novov – Imperial
Web Services Standards
Convergence BoF
The partitioning of the mainstream commercial web
services standards community from the Grid
community through the OGSI and WSRF family of
specifications had produced considerable
polarisation within the community. Work between
the major commercial web services organisation had
produced a new family of specifications, based
around WS-Management, which would unify these
two communities. Collectively they are called WS
Resource Transfer. This meeting provided a limited
update from the people involved in the detailed
negotiations which where currently confidential.
In addition to his active involvement and
contribution to the above working groups, he also
had the opportunity to establish and maintain
relationships with other people in the Grid
community, including Chris Smith (Platform
Computing), Jon MacLaren (Louisiana State
University), Tony Hey (Microsoft), Marvin Theimer
(Microsoft), Geoffrey Fox (Indiana University),
Dennis Gannon (Indiana University), Marty
Humphrey (University of Virginia), Steven Newhouse
(OMII), and many others.
3.30
Dr Colin Perkins –
Glasgow
Grid Interoperability Now
Dr Colin Perkins is a lecturer in the Department of
Computing Science in the University of Glasgow.
The GIN-CG held a set of public and private planning
meetings dealing with building interoperability
between different Grid infrastructures.
For a summary of Dr Perkins GridNet2 activities, see
section 2.30, Dr Colin Perkins – Glasgow.
Applications Area Meeting
As one of the Area Directors for Applications
Standards, Dr Newhouse led this meeting that
reviewed activity taking place in the working and
research groups active in the area. The group
reviewed the success of the workshop and discussed
future activities in the area.
3.28
Mr Vesselin Novov –
Imperial
The reports for Mr Vesselin Novov are consolidated
in Dr Stephen McGough’s reports. For more
information, see section 3.25, Dr Stephen McGough
– Imperial.
For a summary of Mr Novov’s GridNet2 activities, see
section 2.28, Mr Vesselin Novov – Imperial.
3.29
Dr Savas
Parastatidis –
Newcastle
Dr Savas Parastatidis was the Chief Software
Architect at the NEReSC, School of Computing
Science, University of Newcastle.
Dr Perkins stated that the GridNet2 funding was
essential for his work, and believes the outcomes of
this work would be of interest to the e-Science
community, and would underpin future
developments in Grid toolkits and collaborative work
environments.
3.30.1
IETF64
Dr Perkins attended the 64th IETF meeting, held in
Vancouver, 6-11 November 2005.
GridNet2 funded Dr Perkins’ continued activities as
co-chair of the Audio/Video Transport (AVT) and the
Multiparty Multimedia Session Control (MMUSIC)
working groups in the IETF, and his work to improve
the quality and flexibility of protocols for
collaborative work and other real-time applications.
Opinions expressed herein are those of Dr Perkins,
and do not necessarily represent those of other
members of the IETF or its working groups.
The AVT working group develops standards for realtime audio/visual data transfer over IP networks.
Those standards underpin modern voice over IP
(VoIP) and video conferencing systems, including the
AccessGrid. Work in AVT was focused on:
•
Management tools for large scale deployment of
networked collaborative environments
For a summary of Dr Parastatidis’ GridNet2 activities,
see section 2.29, Dr Savas Parastatidis - Newcastl.
•
Multiple description coding for scalability and
loss tolerance
3.29.1
•
Codec control for loss tolerance
•
Support for new audio/visual coding standards
GGF14
Dr Parastatidis attended GGF14 as a representative of
the North-East Regional e- Science Centre (NEReSC).
GGF meetings bring together those interested in
defining the next generation of standards for building
Grid applications. As a result, participation in
working group meetings involves technical discussion
and exchange of ideas in the areas of distributed
computing. Dr Parastatidis was able to contribute his
ideas in the areas of service-oriented, distributed
computing and in the technology area of Web
Services.
Dr Parastatidis participated in the working group
meetings of the OGSA, the BES, and the DAIS
working groups. He is one of the contributors to the
DAIS specification. At the meeting, he contributed
ideas towards the design of the DAIS protocols.
Page 132
During the trip, Dr Perkins spent considerable time
working with the open source community to develop
RTP payload formats for Speex, Vorbis, and Theora
codecs (which were reasonably high quality and were
claimed IPR-free, hence being good candidates for
inclusion in future AccessGrid versions). Dr Perkins
also spent some time working with the authors of the
new scalable video coding proposal (an extension to
H.264) to ensure it fitted within the RTP framework;
this could enable future rate-adaptive conferencing,
extending the reach of networked video conferencing
to more heterogeneous environments. The RTP
Payload Format for uncompressed video, of which Dr
Perkins was co-author, was published shortly before
this meeting, and an extension to that format was
approved at the meeting; these would likely prove
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.30 Dr Colin Perkins – Glasgow
useful for high quality interactive networked
visualisation applications.
•
The MMUSIC working group develops protocols for
initiation and control of real-time and audio/visual
sessions. The following were the primary areas of
work in MMUSIC:
The work in MMUSIC was concentrated on the
following:
•
•
New approaches to negotiating secure media
streams
•
Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE)
methodology for NAT traversal
Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE)
methodology for NAT traversal,
•
Development of extensions to the Session
Description Protocol (SDP)
Development of extensions to the Session
Description Protocol (SDP)
•
Signalling aspects of the negotiation of secure
media streams.
Both ICE and SDP were essential to future networked
virtual environments, forming the infrastructure on
which one builds other session initial protocols. Most
activity in the MMUSIC sessions Dr Perkins chaired
at the 64th IETF meeting related to ICE and its
interactions with SIP PRACK and UPDATE methods.
Dr Perkins also worked with the Area Directors to
speed approval of various SDP extensions, and the
newly revised SDP specification of which Dr Perkins
is the document editor.
More details of the work done in the AVT and
MMUSIC working groups can be found in the official
proceedings of the 64th IETF meeting. Dr Perkins
prepared the minutes for these working groups. For
more details, see the following:
•
http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/05nov/avt.htm
l
•
http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/05nov/mmusic
.html
In addition to his work chairing the AVT and
MMUSIC working groups, Dr Perkins presented a
new proposal for transport of real-time audio/visual
data (carried in RTP) over the newly standardised
Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP).
DCCP was an interesting new network transport
protocol, well suited for traffic that prefers timely
delivery to complete reliability, yet elastic enough to
accept congestion control. His work in this area was
initially focused on streaming audio and video over
DCCP, and should eventually lead to improved
quality and a more flexible service compared to
current “HTTP-streaming” solutions. In the future,
DCCP could prove an appropriate transport for all
kinds of real-time data, for example feeds from
sensor networks, and RTP over DCCP was an
appropriate protocol base to host such applications.
3.30.2
IETF65
Dr Perkins attended the 65th IETF meeting, held in
Dallas on 19-24 March 2006, in his continuing roles
and activities as co-chair of the Audio/Video
Transport (AVT) and the Multiparty Multimedia
Session Control (MMUSIC) working groups in the
IETF, as well as his work to improve the quality and
flexibility of protocols for collaborative work and
other real-time applications.
The work in the AVT group was focused on the
following:
•
Management of large scale VoIP deployments
through updates to the RTP management
information base (MIB)and the RTP Control
Protocol Extended Reports
•
Development of RTP payload formats to support
new media codecs
During the trip, Dr Perkins co-chaired sessions of
both the AVT and MMUSIC working groups, and
conducted numerous ad-hoc meetings with
document authors to discuss their drafts and resolve
open issues. Dr Perkins contributed to the following
key areas:
•
Definition of signalling protocols for layered
media coding to enable adaptive large group
conferences with the new H.264 scalable video
coding (SVC) extensions – potentially directly
applicable to the AccessGrid
•
Discussion of the potential harmonisation of the
Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and the RealTime Streaming Protocol (RTSP) to enable
converged services
•
Discussion on the formation of a new working
group to study forward error correction codes for
streaming media and other real-time sessions
(potentially useful to data streaming e-science
applications such as eVLBI)
•
Discussion of the RTP management framework
(again, useful to better diagnose problems in
AccessGrid sessions).
There was also considerable ongoing work to improve
the signalling for secure RTP sessions, of which the
ZRTP proposal was the best known of several
alternatives. This was of huge importance to the
emerging VoIP market, but also affected other
networked collaborative environments. For more
details of this and the other work done in the AVT
and MMUSIC working groups, see the official
minutes of the 65th IETF meeting, which Dr Perkins
prepared in part:
•
http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/06mar/minute
s/avt.txt
•
http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/06mar/minute
s/mmusic.txt
In addition to chairing the AVT and MMUSIC
working groups, Dr Perkins presented an update to
his proposal for transport of RTP data over the
Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP).
DCCP is a protocol that is gathering interest in the
e-Science community since it allows for a range of
congestion control responses, making it better suited
to the needs of large scale streaming data
applications than TCP or UDP. Dr Perkins’ work
brings RTP framing to DCCP, making it ideally suited
to both video streaming and visualisation, and to bulk
real-time data streaming (for example, sensor data
or eVLBI).
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3.30 Dr Colin Perkins – Glasgow
3.30.3
IETF66
3.30.4
IETF67
Dr Perkins attended the 66th IETF meeting in held in
Montréal on 10-14 July 2006 in his continuing roles
and activities as co-chair of the Audio/Video
Transport (AVT) and the Multiparty Multimedia
Session Control (MMUSIC) working groups in the
IETF, and his work to improve the quality and
flexibility of protocols for collaborative work and
other real-time applications.
Dr Perkins attended the 67th IETF meeting, held in
San Diego from 5–10 November 2006, in his
continuing roles and activities as co-chair of the
Audio/Video Transport (AVT) and Multiparty
Multimedia Session Control (MMUSIC) working
groups in the IETF, and his work to improve the
quality and flexibility of protocols for collaborative
work and other real-time applications.
The AVT working group develops standards that
underpin modern voice over IP, 3G mobile telephony,
and video conferencing systems, including the
AccessGrid, VRVS, and similar tools used by the escience community. Dr Perkins co-chaired the AVT
working group session at the 66th IETF meeting, and
conducted numerous ad-hoc meetings with
document authors to discuss their work and to help
resolve open issues in a timely manner. The main
areas of discussion in the working group are as
follows:
Dr Perkins co-chaired the AVT working group session
at the 67th IETF meeting. The main area of
discussion in the working group session and in
several ad-hoc meetings focused on the following:
•
Video codec control messages, to enhance
support for centralised multiparty conferences, as
a robust alternative to the multicast architecture
used by the AccessGrid
The group came to general agreement that the
current DTLS-based proposal was a better fit to the
RTP architecture than the ZRTP proposal, and
suggested several approaches by which ZRTP could
be adapted.
•
Definition of the RTP Payload Format and
signalling for the H.264 scalable video coding
(SVC) extensions to support extremely large scale
heterogeneous conferencing sessions
•
Improved diagnostic and management tools
The major current work item in MMUSIC is the
Interactive Connectivity Establishment (ICE)
methodology for NAT traversal, which is needed to
allow effective use of signalled real-time media in the
presence of NAT devices. This is directly applicable to
collaborative work tools, such as AccessGrid, but
potentially has much wider use, since the mechanism
is general enough to be used for NAT traversal for file
transfer, RPC, and other signalled sessions. As such,
the underlying technology can be used by Grid
Computing and Peer-to-peer applications, as well as
by voice-over-IP and video conferencing systems. Dr
Perkins chaired the MMUSIC session at the 66th
IETF meeting, managing discussion of these issues.
There is also considerable ongoing work in the IETF
to enhance the security of voice-over-IP and other
video conferencing systems. Dr Perkins is closely
engaged with this work to ensure the resulting
standards sit well with the RTP protocol architecture,
and do not ignore the needs of the large scale
conferencing and e-Science communities (both of
which are sadly under-represented in the IETF). This
work took place in the RTPSEC BoF and mailing list.
In addition to his work chairing these working
groups, Dr Perkins contributed to the Datagram
Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP) working group.
Dr Perkins presented an update to the specification
for transport of RTP-over-DCCP, which was accepted
as a work item of the DCCP group at this past
meeting, and will form the basis for future video
streaming and visualisation systems, and also bulk
real-time data (for example, sensor or eVLBI)
streaming. Dr Perkins also presented preliminary
results to show performance of applications using
TFRC Friendly Rate Control (as used in DCCP CCID
4) when running over real-world networks. This
latter presentation was well received by the
community of DCCP implementers.
Page 134
•
Secure negotiation of encryption and
authentication keys for multimedia sessions
•
Consideration of how the ZRTP and DTLS-based
keying proposals can be adapted to better match
the RTP architectural model
In addition to chairing the session, Dr Perkins
presented two pieces of work to the AVT working
group. The first of these was new work on the
mechanisms and signalling needed to multiplex RTP
and RTCP on a single UDP port to ease NAT
traversal. This was very well received, with
widespread interest from the working group, and
would be developed over the coming months. The
second piece of work was on use of RTP with the
Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP) to
help make multimedia applications adaptive to
network congestion. This was presented in both AVT
and the DCCP working groups to get wide review as it
neared completion. It was expected that this
document would go to working group last call before
the end of the year, and be completed early in 2007.
Dr Perkins co-chaired the MMUSIC session at the
67th IETF meeting, managing the discussion office
methodology for NAT traversal, and was involved in
several related discussions. ICE was expected to be
completed in the first half of 2007, and Dr Perkins
continued to be closely involved in managing the
publication of this standard.
In addition to his work chairing and contributing to
these working groups, Dr Perkins participated in a
meeting with Marshall Eubanks (representing part of
the eVLBI community) on how to develop effective
network transport protocols for eVLBI data. This
followed on from a presentation Marshall gave to the
IETF Transport Area, and made use of Dr Perkins’
past experience with transport of uncompressed high
definition video, to discuss how to use RTP as a
transport protocol for eVLBI streams. In the course
of this meeting, Dr Perkins and Eubank identified
several problems with the current proposal for eVLBI
streaming which could lead to loss of time
synchronisation, and began initial discussion of
alternative proposals.
3.30.5
IETF68
Dr Perkins attended the 68th IETF meeting in held in
Prague from 18–23 March 2007 in his continuing
role and activities as co-chair of the Audio/Video
Transport (AVT) and Multiparty Multimedia Session
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.30 Dr Colin Perkins – Glasgow
Control (MMUSIC) working groups in the IETF, and
his work to develop protocols for collaborative work
and other real-time applications.
Dr Perkins co-chaired the AVT working group session
at the 68th IETF meeting. The main areas of
discussion were as follows:
•
•
•
Generalisation of the RTCP framework to allow
non-compound packets and to report more
detailed performance metrics for IPTV systems
Extensions to RTP to support and signal layered
codecs, in particular the SVC extension to H.264;
Codec control messages, to better support
centralised small group video conferencing
systems
Congestion control for real-time streaming
sessions.
This work was primarily aimed at improving the
quality of small group video conferencing systems,
although the latter item was also applicable to data
streaming (for example, the eVLBI work discussed
later).
The work that Dr Perkins presented at the previous
IETF meeting on multiplexing RTP and RTCP on a
single port to ease NAT traversal went to working
group last call at the meeting, and was expected to be
published as a Proposed Standard in the coming
months. His work on RTP and the Datagram
Congestion Control Protocol (complementing the
RTP congestion control work) was discussed in the
DCCP working group. Issues with keep-alives, to
ensure NAT pinholes remain open, were discussed.
The draft was expected to go to working group last
call shortly, once the RTP and RTCP multiplexing
work, on which it depends, was completed.
Dr Perkins co-chaired the MMUSIC session at the
68th IETF meeting, managing the discussions of ICE
methodology and the SDP media capability
negotiation framework, and related issues. Dr
Perkins also participated in the design team
developing the media capability negotiation
framework, with a particular emphasis on
deployability and backwards compatibility of the
resulting protocols, ensuring they fitted with the SDP
architecture. (Dr Perkins was one of the authors of
the SDP specification.)
In addition to his work chairing and contributing to
these working groups, Dr Perkins continued
discussions with Marshall Eubanks (representing
part of the eVLBI community) on developing effective
network transport protocols for eVLBI data, utilizing
work done in the Audio/Video Transport working
group as a basis. This followed on from previous
discussions at the 67th IETF meeting.
3.30.6
IETF69
Dr Perkins attended the 69th IETF meeting in held in
Chicago from 21–28 July 2007 in his continuing roles
and activities as co-chair of the Audio/Video
Transport (AVT) and Multiparty Multimedia Session
Control (MMUSIC) working groups in the IETF, and
his work developing standards for real-time
collaborative work applications.
Dr Perkins co-chaired both AVT working group
sessions at the 69thIETF meeting. Discussion focused
on the following issues:
•
Securing RTP sessions
•
Management of RTP session, including extended
reception quality feedback
•
Use of non-compound RTCP to reduce the
overhead of congestion control and reception
quality feedback, particularly on wireless links
•
Keep-alive mechanisms for NAT traversal
•
Various new RTP payload formats, including
scalable video coding
The main aims of this work are to improve security
and quality of multimedia communication.
Dr Perkins co-chaired both MMUSIC sessions at the
69th IETF meeting. Both the ICE Methodology for
NAT traversal and SDP media capability negotiation
frameworks were essentially complete. ICE depended
on Perkins’ work multiplexing RTP and RTCP on a
single port to reduce connection setup times.
Dr Perkins’ work on transporting RTP sessions over
the Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP)
had been approved for publication as a Proposed
Standard RFC, subject to completion of on draft on
multiplexing RTP and RTCP on a single port. That
draft was in IETF-wide “last call” for comments, and
was expected to be published as a proposed standard
RFC in the coming months. There had been some
discussion relating to IANA registration of new RTCP
packet types, inspired by this draft, which were
clarified with IANA. Both drafts were discussed at the
meeting, both in their own right, and in the context of
ICE, and reducing the overhead of DTLS security
negotiation for RTP sessions. There was now
considerable interest in this work, especially the
multiplexing draft, to reduce RTP connection
overheads.
3.30.7
IETF70
Dr Perkins attended the 70th Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF) meeting held in Vancouver from 27 December 2007, in his role as co-chair of the
Audio/Video Transport (AVT) working group, and his
work developing standards for real-time collaborative
work applications and Network Address Translator
(NAT) traversal.
Dr Perkins co-chaired both AVT working group
sessions at the 70th IETF meeting. The discussion in
the first session focused on the following:
•
RTP payload formats for layered audio and for
scalable, multi-view and 3-dimensional video
•
Reporting multimedia quality metrics for
performance monitoring and systems
management
Dr Perkins was actively involved in these discussions,
and in several side meetings in these areas, working
to ensure industry proposals are coherent and
aligned with the RTP architectural framework.
The second AVT session focused on the following:
•
Use of non-compound RTCP (a draft from
Ericsson building on Perkins’ previous work on
multiplexed RTCP)
•
Security of RTP sessions
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3 GridNet2 Reports
3.31 Dr Stephen Pickles – Manchester
The security work was gaining large interest, and
should provide an infrastructureless mechanism for
keying secure RTP sessions. Dr Perkins was again
strongly involved, helping to integrate the security
mechanisms (Diffie-Helman key exchange) into the
RTP framework.
Dr Perkins also chaired a BoF session on Self Address
Fixing Evolution. One of the key problems in
deploying peer-to-peer systems in the current
Internet was NAT traversal. This affects multimedia
conferencing, telepresence, and VoIP systems –
which was his main interest in this work – but also
directly affected Grid computing systems which must
transfer files and data or execute jobs across
organisational boundaries. The purpose of this BoF
was to explore the limitations of existing protocols in
this area, and to gauge interest in possibly chartering
future work in the IETF to resolve some of the issues
raised. Discussion was lively, and provided a great
deal of input to the area directors.
Finally, Dr Perkins continued to participate in the
Transport Area Directorate of the IETF, advising the
area directors on transport aspects of real-time media
protocols.
3.30.8
SUMOVER – Nov 05
Dr Perkins attended the SUMOVER workshop in
London, 28-30 November 2005.
The SUMOVER project was a JISC-funded
development activity at University College London
(UCL) that aims to provide for support and
development of the Mbone Videoconferencing tools
for the research community. It was a follow-on to the
early development work at UCL that produced the
Robust Audio Tool (rat) and continued development
of the vic video conferencing system, the tools which
underpin the AccessGrid virtual collaborative
environment.
Dr Perkins was invited to attend the SUMOVER
workshop for several reasons:
1. Several years ago, Dr Perkins was one of the
original developers of rat and has extensive
experience with that system.
2. Dr Perkins’ research into HDTV over IP and
congestion controlled and peer-to-peer
algorithms for video conferencing was directly
relevant to SUMOVER.
3. Dr Perkins co-chaired the IETF Audio/Video
Transport (AVT) and Multiparty Multimedia
Session Control (MMUSIC) working groups
which develop related standards.
Dr Perkins’ participation in the SUMOVER workshop
was two-fold:
•
He discussed his research results where relevant
to the aims of SUMOVER.
•
He discussed how new developments in the IETF
community might affect the development of the
AccessGrid and hence the tools maintained by
the SUMOVER project.
•
A heavy push for NAT traversal solutions, such as
the ICE methodology being developed in the
IETF MMUSIC working group.
•
Development of new RTP profiles for security
and to provide improved feedback for reception
quality monitoring and codec control.
•
Development of new RTP payload formats for
iLBC, AMR, H.264 and their variants.
•
Development of new congestion controlled
transport protocols for audio/visual media (for
example, the RTP profile for TFRC, and DCCP).
•
Continued push to deprecate traditional IP
multicast and replace it with a Source Specific
Multicast system; work on QoS; peer-to-peer
algorithms; E911.
Dr Perkins was the author of the updated SDP
specification and the new specification for RTP over
DCCP, and the SUMOVER workshop offered an
invaluable opportunity to socialise this specification
prior to its adoption by the IETF. It also provided a
valuable opportunity for him to seek input from the
open source and academic/e-Science communities on
their priorities, which he was able to take back to the
IETF through his position as working group chair.
3.30.9
SUMOVER – Apr 07
Dr Perkins attended the SUMOVER workshop held at
UCL on 26 April 2007.
Dr Perkins attended the SUMOVER workshop to
provide advice on the use of IETF standards within
the SUMOVER project. As such, it directly followed
from his attendance at IETF meetings, which form
the major part of his GridNet2 activities.
In particular, the SUMOVER project was integrating
several new video codecs into the AccessGrid system.
These included the H.264 codec, which would give
significant improvements to the quality and
robustness of AccessGrid video in future releases of
the toolkit. The codec was integrated using the RTP
payload format developed in the IETF audio/video
transport working group, of which Dr Perkins was cochair, and he had provided extensive input to the
design of the format. He gave input to the project on
the best way to use this standard, on the intellectual
property issues relating to it, and on the extensions to
the standard that were under development in the
IETF, which would affect SUMOVER.
Dr Perkins also provided the project with an overview
of other developments in the IETF standards
community, which might affect their development
work. These included the RTPSEC security work (the
competing ZRTP and DTLS pre-drafts), NAT
traversal, and congestion control. Unlike the
H.264work, which was currently being integrated
into the AccessGrid toolkit, these subjects were of
primarily longer term interest, for future releases.
3.31
Dr Stephen Pickles –
Manchester
The developments in the IETF that may be relevant
include:
Dr Stephen Pickles was Team Leader for Grid
Developments at the University of Manchester.
•
For a summary of Dr Pickles’ GridNet2 activities, see
section 2.31, Dr Stephen Pickles – Manchester.
Continued development of SIP-based solutions
for session initiation and control, using the SDP
offer/answer model for media negotiation.
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3 GridNet2 Reports
3.31 Dr Stephen Pickles – Manchester
This report covers Dr Pickles’ activities in SDOs that
have been facilitated by GridNet2 funding. These were
mostly within the OGF (formerly the GGF), but also
OASIS and ETSI.
3.31.5
3.31.1
The Multi-Grid Interoperation initiative started by
Charlie Catlett, Satoshi Matsuoka Satoshi, Ray Bair,
Dane Skow and Dr Pickles in September 2005
became the GIN-CG. GIN held a well-attended
workshop, composed of four sessions, and the major
production Grids signed up.
OGF
Dr Pickles was elected to the GFSG in September
2004, as Area Director for what was then the
Scheduling and Resource Management (SRM) Area.
Dr Pickles stood down as co-chair of the SAGA
Research Group (which he helped to found) shortly
after.
During the period of this report, the OGF Areas were
re-organised, and the SRM Area was effectively split
into two areas, that is, the Compute Area and the
Management Area. Dr Pickles continued as AD of the
Compute Area, but also remained active in the
accounting working groups (UR-WG and RUS-WG)
which moved to the Management Area. This
re-organisation was overshadowed by the merger of
GGF and the Enterprise Grid Alliance to become the
OGF, and this topic dominated the discussions in
GFSG. Nonetheless, the OGF managed to keep the
specifications flowing; indeed the pace seemed to
pick up a little. During this period, Dr Pickles was the
author of three published OGF documents, an
acknowledged contributor on four, and influenced or
shepherded numerous others.
The Compute Area made great progress with JSDL,
OGSA-BES, and OGSA-HPC-Profile, and WSAgreement (GRAAP-WG) finally became a proposed
recommendation. Dr Pickles also helped to start the
GIN activity.
3.31.2
OASIS
The WSRF specifications were ratified as OASIS
standards on 24 April 2006. Dr Pickles co-authored
an HPDC paper (Humphrey, Foster et al.) on WSRF
interoperability, which helped to restore community
confidence in WSRF. Dr Pickles’ RA, Mark McKeown,
contributed to the development of these standards
and provided an implementation of them in Perl. Dr
Pickles also participated in some calls of the OASIS
WSRF Technical Committee, including the last.
3.31.3
ETSI
ETSI (http://www.etsi.org/) is a long-established
European SDO with roots in telecommunications and
interoperability testing, and has won European
funding to address topics in the Grid space. Dr
Pickles took on a temporary liaison function between
OGF and ETSI, and represented OGF at the third
meeting of the ETSI Technical Committee on GRID
(TC-GRID).
3.31.4
GGF15
The SRM Area was split into two areas, Compute and
Management. Dr Pickles’ co-AD for SRM, Bill
Nitzberg, did not stand for another term and Ramin
Yahyapour joined him as co-AD for the Compute
Area. Hiro Kishimoto and Ellen Stokes took over the
Management Area. Dr Pickles continued to take a
special interest in the accounting groups UR-WG and
RUS-WG, which have been moved to the
Management Area.
GGF16
The GFSG worked on the details of new organisation
arising from the merger of EGA and GGF.
Dr Pickles also organised a BoF on interoperability,
in the context of bringing GGF specifications to full
recommendation status. This meeting, and followups, led to the establishment of the good practice of
writing an informational document on plans for
interoperability testing prior to actually conducting
the tests. The DAIS-WG was the first working group
to do it this way, on Dr Pickles’ advice.
3.31.6
GGF17
The GridWorld Japan attracted a tremendous 3000
participants. Dr Pickles was busy with working
groups.
3.31.7
GGF18
GGF18 was held in conjunction with GridWorld; this
was not very successful, and IDG and OGF decide not
to continue their co-location agreement. The GFSG
was strengthened by new blood from EGA.
Manchester was announced as host city for OGF20.
3.31.8
OGF19
This was a five-day meeting with a synchronisation
day mid-week (following the W3C model) and was
pronounced successful by all. The numbers were
down, but much good business was accomplished.
Security moved up the priority list of many OGF
working groups. A BoF on Levels of Assurance
attracted a remarkable level of interest; in the months
following it became a new research group.
3.31.9
OGF20
Dr Pickles acted as chair of the Local Organising
Committee (LOC) for OGF20 and the 2nd EGEE User
Forum. This was complicated by the number of
organisations involved: OGF (the customer), EGEE
(another customer), UK e-Science (the formal host),
and the University of Manchester (LOC). Manchester
Central, the venue, underwent re-branding and staff
turnover, and numerous other committees and colocated events that were hosted by the University
were also involved. In the end, the events were
successful, thanks to sustained efforts by many. Dr
Pickles also shared the organisational responsibilities
of a BoF (Workshop on Heuristics for Implementing
Semantic Knowledge Yardsticks), and a two-session
workshop on Computational Steering. Dr Pickles was
not able to attend all of OGF20, due to illness, but
was able to attend the GFSG steering meeting.
3.31.10 GFSG F2F – Jan 06
Dr Pickles attended the GFSG F2F meeting held in
San Francisco, on 11-13 January, 2006.
The discussion at this meeting focused on the
forthcoming merger between GGF and the Enterprise
Grid Alliance.
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3 GridNet2 Reports
3.32 Prof Omer Rana – Cardiff
3.31.11 GFSG F2F – Jul 06
1. Frameworks and Approaches
Dr Pickles attended the GFSG Standards Council F2F
meeting, held in London on 26-27 July 2006.
2. Use Cases/Applications and Combining
Technologies
Fujitsu Laboratories Europe hosted this meeting,
attended by GFSG members in the Standards area.
During this meeting, the GFSG members set the
standard priorities for the new merged organisation,
refined the standards roadmap, and formulated
strategies to improve the document process.
3. Technologies and Standards
3.31.12 GFSG F2F – Dec 06
Dr Pickles attended the GFSG F2F meeting at held
e-Science 2006, Amsterdam, on 6-8 December 2006.
This two day F2F meeting followed the OGF session
held at e-Science 2006.
3.31.13 OGF GIN F2F – Mar 07
Dr Pickles attended the OGF GIN F2F Meeting, held
at CERN on 14 March, 2007.
Semantic Grids: Frameworks and
Approaches
A key presentation in the first session focused on the
developed of “S-OGSA” – essentially an approach to
providing semantic description of services within
OGSA. Such an approach was intended to provide the
ability to add semantic content to each service that
was made available over existing Grid systems (such
as Globus), whilst still maintaining compatibility with
OGSA. Using this approach, metadata stores and
ontology engines were essentially modelled as data
services in OGSA, thereby enabling the use of OGSADAI and related data management techniques that
were already being used in the Grid community.
Overall, S-OGSA is based on three key ideas:
•
The GIN leaders gathered at CERN (with some
participating remotely via Access Grid) to determine
goals and priorities for 2007.
The S-OGSA model defines Grid-Entities,
Knowledge-Entities and Semantic-Bindings. The
idea seemed to be that Semantic-Bindings allow
Grid-Entities to make use of particular
knowledge sources (such as rules, ontologies,
etc). Semantic-Bindings might have state, and
were modelled as assertions on Grid-Entities.
3.31.14 ETSI Meeting – Nov 06
Dr Pickles attended the ETSI meeting held at the
CoreGrid conference in Sophia-Antipolis, 30 Nov1 Dec 2006.
•
Dr Pickles represented the OGF at the third meeting
of ETSI’s Technical Committee on GRID, which has
won significant European funding. The meeting
worked out where the ETSI and OGF agendas
overlapped and strategies in which the two
organisations could co-operate effectively in areas of
mutual interest. In the following months, Dr Pickles
invested considerable effort in arranging to bring
ETSI to OGF20.
3.32
a. Provisioning Service
The Provisioning Service enabled the
management (creation, removal, update, etc)
of Semantic-Bindings and KnowledgeEntities
b. Semantic-Aware Service
The Semantic-Aware Service extended
existing services (such as the authorisation
service) with semantic information.
Prof Omer Rana is professor of Performance
Engineering in the School of Computer Science at
Cardiff University.
3.32.1
GGF16
For Prof Rana, a key message from GGF16 was the
increasing focus on using Grid standards within
industry, especially with the recent merger between
the Enterprise Grid Alliance (EGA) and the GGF. Prof
Rana participated in the workshop organised by the
Semantic Grids research group, and the GRAAP
working group sessions.
Semantic Grids
The Semantic Grids (SG) group organised a
workshop focusing on the use of RDF/RDF-S as a
way to extend descriptions of services within Grid
middleware and applications. The workshop was
primarily intended to increase awareness of SG
technologies, with a particular focus on the EU
OntoGrid project. The workshop was divided into
three sessions:
Page 138
S-OGSA Capabilities
The S-OGSA capabilities would include all the
semantically-enhanced services made available
over the Grid. Two infrastructure services had
also been identified:
Prof Omer Rana –
Cardiff
For a summary of Prof Rana’s GridNet2 activties, see
section 2.32, Prof Omer Rana – Cardiff.
S-OGSA Model
•
S-OGSA Mechanisms
The S-OGSA mechanisms related to how the
model and capabilities described above could be
mapped to existing Grid infrastructure. It seemed
that the Common Information Model (CIM) was
being widely used in S-OGSA to represent Grid
infrastructure.
S-OGSA was an interesting approach which
attempted to “extend” rather than “re-create”.
Presumably, this was undertaken to ensure that there
was a good adoption of the approach within the
existing Grid community.
A related infrastructure talk by Jane Hunter focused
on extending the metadata descriptions in the
Storage Resource Broker (SRB) with RDF. This was
suggested as a technique to extend the search
capability that can be made available in the SRB. An
extension to the MySRB interface was provided via
the following:
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.32 Prof Omer Rana – Cardiff
1. A portal with semantic search capability
2. A search engine that makes use of the RDF
descriptions
Within the portal, users are required to load
ontologies, and then build instance data based on
these, using extensions to existing SRB data types.
Hunter claimed that no significant modification was
made to the SRB core software, and therefore this
approach could still be used alongside existing SRB
installations. Although the benefit of the proposed
approach was clear, it was not clear why this
approach was specifically discussing SRB, because it
had a much wider applicability. The approach also
shared some similarities with the MIT Simile 3
project, which has developed a plug-in for the
FireFox browser to support ontologies (called Piggy
Bank) 4.
Semantic Grids: Use Cases/Applications
and Combining Technologies
Three Grid application use cases which currently
make use of semantic information were presented:
•
Comb-e-Chem – primarily focusing on workflow
descriptions and electronic notebooks
•
Satellite mission systems (from OntoGrid) –
primarily focusing on data integration from
multiple types of instruments
•
Music Information Retrieval – primarily focusing
on time series retrieval and digital libraries of
music
All three uses cases made use of RDF-like
descriptions and had requirements for workflow,
provenance and (large scale) data management.
The Combining Technologies session involved a
discussion about integrating event management for
sensor-based information (primarily in the
Geographical Information Systems domain).
managing services made available over the Grid and
by establishing a bridge between agent and Web
Service standards, it was possible to use agents
alongside existing Web Service implementations.
Suguri did not, however, outline the development
effort that would be needed to adopt such an
approach. A new task force set up by the IEEE to
address this concern was highlighted.
Semantic Grids: Technologies and
Standards
The final session in the workshop focused on how
OGSA-DAI and semantic services could be
integrated. Two approaches were discussed:
•
OGSA-DAI-RDF
•
WS-DAIOnt (in OntoGrid)
OGSA-DAI-RDF aimed to utilise the activity
framework in OGSA-DAI to support RDF-based
queries (defined in SPARQL). Once this had been
achieved, it might also be possible to transform
SPARQL (using XSLT) to other representations.
WS-DAIOnt, on the other hand, was primarily
focused on providing access mechanisms for ontology
services which had been wrapped as WS-DAI
services. Another focus was the ability to extend the
data access mechanisms so that RDF-based queries
(using Sesame/SeRQL) could be made to these
ontology services.
Overall, the workshop usefully highlighted work
being undertaken in the Semantic Grid area. The use
of RDF was a significant common theme running
through the talks, which may have been by design.
The use of SLAs was not really addressed, although it
was clear that the approaches currently being used to
define and store metadata in RDF could be used to
provide the following:
•
Geoffrey Fox also presented a number of registry
services that could be used to record service metadata
for use in the composition of services. A number of
WS-X standards were discussed with relevance to the
dynamic composition of services, with a key focus on
improving messaging performance between services.
A second talk, by Hiroki Suguri, focused on the
integration of the FIPA agent standard with Web
Services. Suguri discussed the limited capability for
representing semantic information within WSDL,
and compared this with “agent capability”
descriptions provided in FIPA, along with agent
interaction support through FIPA performatives.
A key point in the talk was the need for bridging
agent capability and interaction mechanisms with
Web Service standards. The motivation for this was
the additional reasoning capability that an agentbased approach would provide. Suguri also reasoned
that agents provided a more useful abstraction for
For instance, in the current WS-Agreement
specification, the wsag:Penalty and
wsag:Reward are not very clearly specified.
Relating these terms to SLOs in the agreement
would provide a useful way to reason about the
types of penalty or rewards that could be
associated with violating or meeting a particular
SLO.
•
3
Relationships between different SLAs
In this instance, it could be useful to assess the
difference between two SLAs that have been
generated by the same party at different times.
This would also be useful for generating a
composite/aggregated SLA from multiple
independent SLAs. The requirement for
aggregating SLAs had already been identified a
number of times.
•
MIT, “Semantic Interoperability of Metadata and
Information in unLike Environments (SIMILE)”.
Available at: http://simile.mit.edu/. Last accessed:
March 2006.
Relationships between terms within a SLA (such
as WS-Agreement)
A means to store SLA templates in data stores
that could be accessed via RDF-based query
languages
Such a capability would be particularly useful if a
client wished to generate an SLA from a
pre-defined template, for instance.
4
“Piggy Bank”. Available at:
http://simile.mit.edu/piggy-bank/. Last accessed:
March 2006.
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3 GridNet2 Reports
3.32 Prof Omer Rana – Cardiff
•
Query stored SLAs to look for conformance to
particular business level objectives (different
from SLOs)
This would imply the use of a policy to define
such objectives.
Some of these concepts were discussed at subsequent
sessions of the Semantic Grid research group and via
email-based discussions.
GRAAP-WG
The need for an SLA had been outlined by a number
of Grid application users. Some people had identified
such SLAs to be static descriptions of the capabilities
of resource providers, whilst others advocated a more
dynamic approach which involve negotiation of SLAs.
As Grid infrastructure moved towards commercial
adoption, the use of SLAs would become more
significant.
The GRAAP-WG released the WS-Agreement
specification on September 20, 2005 as a GWD-R.
This specification had already undergone an
extensive review process (via the GRAAP mailing list
and telcon sessions), and the discussion at GGF 16
was centred on evaluating some of these comments
and how the document could be improved. A total of
92 comments had been received, ranging from issues
related to the syntax and grammar used to discussion
points related to how WS-Agreement could be
extended, with additional support for security,
negotiation, etc. It was decided that the first port of
call should be to finalise the current version of the
document, and in future interactions to consider
extensions proposed by the community. The current
version of the WS-Agreement specification provided
a collection of terms that could be used to specify an
agreement, but did not identify any particular set of
terms that identify what service properties were to be
delivered under the agreement (see discussion
below).
The GRAAP group was also exploring how the WSRF
specification would affect “Resource Properties”
within WS-Agreement. This discussion was
postponed to a future telcon.
In the first GRAAP session, Toshiyuki Nakata (NEC)
presented his work on utilizing multiple SLAs within
an Internet Service Provider (ISP), and explained the
requirements of to be able to combine terms in
multiple SLAs to create an aggregate SLA. He also
identified the need to define common terms within
the SLA. Some discussion followed on what would be
the best candidate for providing this set of
terminology, based on the activities that were already
taking place within the GGF. Most were of the
opinion that the terms in Job Submission Description
Language (JSDL) should be used, whereby JSDL
elements could be composed into WS-Agreement
Service Description Terms (SDTs). Essentially, SDTs
identified the functionality that would be made
available by a provider under the agreement.
Alternatives to JSDL included the Common
Information Model (CIM) that was primarily being
developed by DMTF, although it was now also being
evaluated at the GGF. It was generally agreed,
however, that at the present time, a CIM schema in
XML did not exist and JSDL would be a better
candidate to consider.
Another alternative included Key Performance
Indicators (KPI) related to Web Services in
particular. KPIs indicate measurable business-level
Page 140
parameters/data that can be used to evaluate the
performance of a particular business function 5. Once
KPIs extracted from business processes have been
determined, it is possible to identify useful
relationships among SLAs through such indicators.
When more than two parties were involved, and more
than one process, the monitoring and controlling of
such a relationship was vital. KPIs therefore focused
on business-centric parameters, whereas parameters
in JSDL and CIM are more system-centric.
An associated question that needed to be considered
was the types of monitoring tools that had to be used
to record such parameters. Although a variety of tools
existed for system-related parameters defined in
JSDL, there might not be many such tools available
for KPIs. An alternative approach in projects such as
AKOGRIMO involved users specifying service bands,
such as “gold”, “silver” or “bronze”, rather than
specific parameters. A key discussion point remained
- identifying how service parameters and constraints
on these parameters needed to be specified. At the
time, very little experience in the use of
WS-Agreement within “real” business-oriented Grids
existed. It was generally agreed that it would be
useful to evaluate this, and to encourage greater
uptake of WS-Agreement.
The second GRAAP session started with two
presentations of WS-Agreement use cases.
The first presentation, about the EU CATNETS
project from Michael Reinecke (University of
Bayreuth) and Rana, focused on the use of WSAgreement for choosing service providers in a Grid
market. The project used SLOs within WS-Agreement
to define economic metrics such as “social utility” and
price. The project was essentially considering the coexistence of two types of markets – a service market
and a resource market. Hence, a particular service
instance could co-exist on multiple computational or
data resources, and would have a different price
(depending on the performance profile of the
underlying computational/data resource).
WS-Agreement had been used in the project as a
means to specify user requirements which were then
subsequently translated to service discovery requests
in the resource and service markets.
The second presentation (by Wolfgang Ziegler) in the
session discussed the VIOLA project which makes use
of WS-Agreement to support meta-scheduling. Both
of these presentations outlined the need for
negotiation mechanisms within SLAs, and it was
noted that the GRAAP-WG was currently gathering
requirements on negotiation and would consider
publishing an “informational” document in the near
future.
The third GRAAP session involved interactions with
Franco Travostino (Nortel Networks) to identify how
WS-Agreement would be used by network providers.
He discussed the importance of generating an
agreement between multiple carriers when setting up
an end-to-end path. The IPSphere forum 6 was
5
N. Nagaratnam, A. Nadalin, M. Hondo, M.
McIntosh, and P. Austel, ”Business-driven
Application Security: From Modeling to Managing
Secure Applications”, IBM Systems Journal, pp 847–
867, Vol.44, No.4, 2005
6
“IPSphere Forum”, Available at:
http://www.ipsphereforum.org/home. Last accessed:
March 2006.
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.32 Prof Omer Rana – Cardiff
discussed in this instance, which was focusing on
open standards for delivering particular network
quality and reliability to business users. Franco also
identified the need for adding security to
WS-Agreement, such as the capability for a two-sided
authentication of the agreement.
It was also discussed whether it would be useful to
identify networking terms (similar to JSDL) that
could be more widely shared in the WS-Agreement.
At the time, there was also no provision in WSAgreement for a cancellation of the agreement. It was
agreed that this was an important issue, and would be
dealt within in a future GRAAP session.
There was also general agreement that it was useful
and important to establish a test bed for evaluating
the use of WS-Agreement. Participation at the
Interoperability Fests was identified as a useful way
to achieve this.
Conclusion
Prof Rana primarily participated in the GRAAP and
Semantic Grid groups at the GGF. He also attended
the industry panel organised by Wolfgang Gentzsch.
The panel included participants from the Japanese
Grid/NAREGI project, the US TeraGrid, Intel,
SIMDAT and NextGRID. Virtually all commercial
participants still saw security as a significant barrier
to adoption of Grid computing within their own
companies. All of the commercial participants were
now also considering the use of SLAs as a means to
specify the types of capability that should be made
available for use (within their own companies), and
based on existing mechanisms that were already
available (as a means to interact between sub-units
within the same company). The following projects at
GGF16 identified a need for SLAs:
•
3.32.2
GRAAP – WS-Agreement
The GRAAP-WG sessions on WS-Agreement were
primarily intended to analyze comments received on
the current specification (released in September
2005). The comments received on the specification
are based on emails to the GRAAP mailing list and
subsequent discussions via weekly telcons. Good
progress was being made to provide a more robust
version of the specification. It was felt, however, that
some of the comments were out of scope for the
current specification, such as support for negotiation,
and these requirements would be considered in a
future version of the document. Most comments had
been taken into account, although some aspects
needed to be considered in more detail, as follows:
•
Supporting expiration was, however, not
straightforward, as it might involve resolving
existing reservation for resources – which might
not be under the direct control of the agreement
initiator. It was felt that additional intermediate
agreement states might need to be introduced to
achieve this. Discussion on this continued.
•
4. SIMDAT and NextGRID both identified a need to
establish SLAs between participants.
•
Discussion of WS-Agreement with the Semantic
Grid community and in particular, the role of
policy descriptions and SLA specification based
on RDF
•
Presentation at the GRAAP session on CATNETs
project
•
Discussion with GRAAP participants on set up of
a test bed and description of terms (as part of
Service Description Terms)
•
Negotiation use case for WS-Agreement based on
the EU CATNETs project
The need to support aggregation of multiple
agreements.
In this case, it was necessary to combine
constraints that were part of multiple agreements
and merge these constraints into a single
composite agreement. It was generally felt that
more examples were needed before this aspect
could be pursued further.
Prof Rana’s particular contributions at GGF16 were:
Session chair for Semantic Grid workshop
The need to support the expiration/cancellation
of an agreement.
It was felt that this provision was necessary for
bookkeeping purposes, and simply associating a
time period over which an agreement was valid
was not enough. It was necessary to provide a
more explicit mechanism for cancellation of an
existing agreement.
2. Federico Ruggieri (INFN, Italy) outlined the need
to have SLAs as part of the Italian Regional
Operation Centre for Grid computing, relating
the use of SLAs with accounting and monitoring
mechanisms made available within the Italian
Grid.
•
GGF17
GGF-17 took place at the Tokyo International Forum
in Japan and was co-located with the GridWorld
event. The event attracted around 300 delegates (for
GGF) and over 3,500 delegates (for GridWorld). Most
of the presentations in the GridWorld event were in
Japanese with limited simultaneous translation
available. Prof Rana, however, found it useful to see
a variety of industry presentations, ranging from
hardware and software vendors to some specialist
end users. Prof Rana attended the event from May 9
to May 13.
1. The keynote talk from Ian Foster clearly outlined
the need for SLAs and policies.
3. Wolfgang Gentzsch and Robert Cohen identified
SLAs as an important requirement for industry
uptake of Grids (part of the “Production Grids
Enterprise and Research” session).
Contribution to the WS-Agreement specification
document, and subsequent involvement in a
telcon organised on March 8, 2006
•
Guarantee terms in the agreement had not been
modified, although some comments on this had
been received.
The comments primarily indicated that it was
necessary to specify which service objectives had
associated guarantee terms (not currently
supported). Hence, in the current version of the
specification, guarantee terms might not be
associated with particular objectives defined in
the agreement. In the same context, it was also
necessary to clarify on the state of a guarantee
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3 GridNet2 Reports
3.32 Prof Omer Rana – Cardiff
term, that is, whether it had been fulfilled,
violated (and to what extent), etc.
•
It was also felt necessary to state the relationship
between an agreement template and the created
agreement in some more straight forward
manner.
Some of the comments received related to the
requirement of dynamic SLAs, and this formed the
basis for two sessions. In particular, there had been
feedback from participants in the European OntoGrid
project that support for negotiations was needed
within WS-Agreement. Most of these participants
advocated an agent-based approach and felt that
work that had been undertaken within the multiagent systems community needed to be taken
onboard. None of the OntoGrid participants were
present at this event to discuss their particular
viewpoints.
The remainder of the session focused on discussing
interoperability issues in WS-Agreement. For
instance, how would interoperability constraints be
defined in the context of Service Level Agreements,
and in particular, what are the interoperability issues
in the context of WS-Agreement? Some people
argued that it was too early to consider
interoperability, and the current focus should be on
defining a stable specification. Others felt that the
specification should account for possible
interoperability issues that might arise when the
specification is subsequently implemented.
It was felt that to support interaction between
different implementations, it was necessary to define,
in a precise way, how a client from one application
making use of WS-Agreement could talk to another.
It was felt that experience from OGSA-DAI should be
used to define mechanisms to support such
interoperability. Some of these issues would
necessarily relate to application specific data models,
for instance, the terms within an agreement would be
application-specific and interoperability would then
require the two applications to share these terms.
However, it was also necessary to define some generic
terms that could be application-independent, and
which all implementations of WS-Agreement must
support. To demonstrate interoperability, it was felt
that multiple implementations of the same
specification were necessary to identify whether
interoperability between the two is possible. It was
also felt that advice from the GIN-CG should be
sought for this.
It was generally agreed that it would be useful to have
an experience document to outline how
WS-Agreement is currently being used, what
additional capability particular users need and
subsequently identify what type of operations were
necessary to support interoperability. It was also
necessary to undertake tests against the specification,
which could only be done once the specification had
been implemented. An agreement server could be set
up to allow members of the community to test their
specification for interoperability.
The next step was to provide implementation of the
agreement once the specification had been finalised.
It was necessary to:
1. Identify who was involved in implementing the
specification.
2. Make parts available for others to use.
3. Make parts of the specification open source.
Page 142
In the same context, it was also necessary to identify
“micro-specs” for additional domain specific terms
that could be used in the agreement.
GRAAP Session 2: Dynamic
Agreements
In the context of supporting dynamic agreements,
two talks were given:
•
Dynamic SLAs by Prof Rana
•
Function-based WS-Agreement by Viktor
Yarmolenko (University of Manchester).
Prof Rana’s talk discussed the requirements for
establishing dynamic SLAs, which included:
•
The need to modify an agreement that had
already been established – especially if the
agreement was used at a time much later than
when the agreement had been defined.
The requirement here related to comparing the
cost of re-establishing a new agreement vs. being
able to adapt an agreement that was already in
place.
•
The need to support flexibility in the agreement if
an agreement initiator was not fully aware of the
operating environment when the agreement was
defined.
In this case, the agreement initiator might not
have enough information to determine what to
ask for from a provider. This was likely to be the
case when an agreement initiator or provider
operated with imprecise knowledge about the
other party involved in the agreement.
Based on these requirements, two types of dynamic
agreements were defined:
1. Static Agreement
In this case, it was necessary to identify Service
Description Terms, Guarantee Terms, and
Service Level Objectives (SLOs). Both Guarantee
Terms and SLOs were to be precisely defined at
agreement creation time.
2. Dynamic Agreement
In this case, it was necessary to identify Service
Description Terms and Guarantee Terms which
were now defined as ranges or functions, and
Service Level Objectives which were defined as
ranges or as functions. The use of range-based or
function-based agreements provided a useful
basis for supporting dynamicity in the
agreement.
Examples from the European FP6 CATNETs project
were used to demonstrate how dynamic agreements
could be specified and used for developing a Grid
resource and service market 7.
7
Liviu Joita, Omer Rana, Oscar Ardaiz, Pablo
Chacin, Isaac Chao, Felix Freitag, Leandra Navarro,
“Application Deployment using Catallactic Grid
Middleware”, Third International Workshop on
Middleware for Grid Computing, ACM/IFIP/USENIX
International Middleware Conference, November 28–
December 2, Grenoble, France, 2005.
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.32 Prof Omer Rana – Cardiff
The second talk focused on the ability to specify
agreements as functions – where options are
expressed as a set of variables. Variables could
include terms such as start time and end time of a
particular job. In this instance, a client would send a
function-based agreement to a provider, who would
evaluate the function locally and return to the client
the type of resources that it had the ability to provide
(at the time the agreement was to become valid).
The aim here was to minimise the number of
re-negotiations necessary to reach some consensus
on values associated with agreement terms.
Yarmolenko discussed a case study that
demonstrated how the approach could be used in
practice. 8
Currently, the focus within this work was on
specifying guarantee terms as functions, and
Yarmolenko compared the use of binary and fuzzy
functions. A key advantage of this approach was that
particular terms could be included in the agreement
the value for which was not available at the time of
agreement creation. This would therefore allow
greater flexibility in the way that an agreement was
defined. WS-Agreement in its current form could be
used to support this function-based approach,
although it was necessary to identify how the
functions would be described using XML.
It was agreed that a workshop would be organised a
day before the next GGF in Washington to discuss the
following:
1. Common application independent terms that
may be used within an agreement, thereby
leading to re-usable implementations
2. Implementations of the WS-Agreement
specifications that are currently available
Job Submission Description
Language (JSDL)
The session on JSDL primarily focused on extensions
being proposed to the specification to enable
description of parallel jobs, with particular focus on
MPI. Two efforts in this area were presented: one
from Imperial College (UK), based on the GridSAM
project, and the other from the Japanese Grid
initiative (as part of NAREGI).
JSDL extensions in the NAREGI project were based
on two types of job requirements:
•
Single MPI executables, which would make use of
“worker side” JSDL
•
Multiple executables running on multiple
systems at multiple sites
In the first case, it was enough to provide a reference
to a single MPI executable, whereas in the second
case it was necessary to relate multiple MPI
executables. Based on these job types, the following
types of JSDL extensions were proposed:
•
8
JSDL submission and JSDL execution
Rizos Sakellariou and Viktor Yarmolenko, “On the
Flexibility of WS-Agreement for Job Submission”,
Third International Workshop on Middle-ware for Grid
Computing, ACM/IFIP/USENIX International
Middleware Conference, November 28–December 2,
Grenoble, France, 2005.
•
JSDL abstract and JSDL concrete
•
Wrapper for different JSDL documents –
primarily by providing extensions for MPI jobs
Consequently, researchers in the NAREGI project
have added ComplexJobInstance, JobInstance,
and AssociateJobID. Other MPI specific
extensions include MPIType, MPITasks,
TasksPerHost, HelperCommand etc.
For instance, MPITasks defines how many tasks run
on a host. Some of these extensions are therefore
aimed at capturing the command line arguments that
are passed when executing an MPI job.
The GridSAM project also proposed MPI-based
extensions to JSDL and focused on identifying the
minimal set of terms that could be used across all
MPI versions. The GridSAM extensions were
particularly focused on supporting job submission
within the UK National Grid Service (NGS), which
made use of a Globus-based submission interface. It
was therefore necessary that the absolute minimum
set of assumptions be made about the types of jobs
being submitted. The work extended POSIX elements
with additional terms defined in the GridSAM
project. It was also clarified that GridSAM did not
execute jobs, but primarily submitted jobs to the
appropriate system that was then responsible for
their execution.
During discussion in this session, it became clear that
vendors, such as IBM, had their own internal
developments taking place with reference to JSDL,
and such vendors were extending the JSDL
specification internally. One example presented was
the use of terms associated with the Tivoli workload
scheduler, which was a product internal to IBM. One
reason cited for these extensions was the lack of
expressiveness available within the existing JSDL
specification; it was outlined that IBM requirements
were not being met with the existing specification as
it was too coarse-grained for their internal use.
However, IBM was clearly interested in participating
in the JSDL group within GGF, and making
contributions based on their use of this specification.
It was also made clear that JSDL primarily provided a
basis for job execution, and was not intending to
provide a programming model.
As various JSDL extensions were being proposed, it
was recognised that using very specific terms in JSDL
might be too restrictive, thereby leading to
incompatibility between different extensions. It was
felt, therefore, that a more open symmetric matching
scheme should be employed, allowing developers to
add more complex attributes if necessary. It was
identified that Condor ClassAds primarily provided
a set of “conventions”; however, these can be
extended in arbitrary ways.
In this context, the relationship between JSDL and
Condor ClassAds was discussed, in addition to
similarities with other projects at Boston/Harvard.
These projects focused on allowing the specification
of arbitrary attributes. It was therefore necessary to
employ some asymmetric matching scheme that
enabled a resource to advertise its capabilities using a
particular set of terms. Subsequently, a job would
define its own requirements using terms that may not
be identical to those used for defining the capabilities
of a resource. This would allow resource providers to
focus on the capabilities of their own resources, and
application developers to focus on their own
requirements.
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3.32 Prof Omer Rana – Cardiff
Hence, the idea that a match occurs between task
requirements and resource capabilities would be
incidental rather than planned. It was felt that such a
match-making scheme would lead to greater use, and
at the same time avoid the need for everyone to use
the same set of terms.
In general, it was agreed that more discussion was
necessary about how JSDL descriptions could map
into a more open framework. Furthermore, the
resource requirements section for JSDL should act
primarily as a placeholder that could be extended by
developers as necessary. Hence the intention would
be to not put the extensibility in the JSDL schema,
and keep this outside. It was also generally agreed
that the Common Information Model (CIM) provided
a useful basis for adding additional terms to JSDL,
although additional work was necessary to fully
understand how terms in CIM could be deployed in
real scenarios.
The JSDL specification provided a useful basis for
defining terms within a Service Level Agreement
(such as WS-Agreement). Any updates being
proposed to this specification therefore would
increase the expressiveness of a WS-Agreement. The
flexibility being proposed could have benefit for
service providers and users, but would lead to greater
complexity when used as part of a SLA, because it
would now be more difficult to evaluate whether an
agreement had been violated by a provider.
Information Model
The Information Model session focused on the
extension of terms in JSDL to enable better
match-making between a client request and a
provider advertisement. A position paper by E J
Stokes (from IBM) 9 formed the basis for discussion
in this session.
The discussion focused on the requirements for
providing an information model for resources –
which included the ability:
•
To manage resource information in the system
•
To advertise the capabilities of resources in the
system
•
To express a set of requirements needed by a job
that needs resources to run
It was necessary to determine the granularity at
which such information was to be provided. Too
much detail would make the information model
complex to use, and too little detail might lead to the
model being unusable and lead to vendors extending
the model in ways that would constrain
interoperability.
The focus of the discussion in this session was on the
type of XML syntax (primarily name value pairs,
where values could be literals or ranges) that could be
used to specify the information model. For example,
to advertise the capability of resource computer A,
the following terms could be included:
<node>
<name>computerA.acme.com</name>
<processor>
<type>Intel</type>
9
E. J. Stokes, “Information Modeling in OGSA
Position Paper”, Open Grid Services Architecture
WG, May 11, 2006.
Page 144
<CPUspeed>3200</CPUspeed>
</processor>
<OS>
<type>Linux</type>
<physicalMemory>3000000</physical
Memory>
<virtualMemory>12000000</virtual
Memory>
<maxProcessesPerUser>32</max
ProcessesPerLimit>
</OS>
</node>
Similarly, the requirement for some job activity 2
would be expressed as:
<activity>
<name>activity1</name>
<processor>
<type>Intel</type>
<CPUCount> <=2 </CPUCount>
<CPUspeed> >3000 </CPUspeed>
</processor>
<OS>
<type>WindowsXP</type>
</OS>
</activity>
Overall, work on the information model provided a
good starting point for evaluating more useful
match-making techniques. The use of ranges in XML
– as advocated in this position paper – was possibly
too restrictive for a real application. There had been
significant work in the match-making/service
discovery community on using more complex
description techniques (based on RDF or OWL) that
were better suited to encode such resource capability
or task requirements. Clearly, a closer collaboration
was needed between the OGSA-WG and the Semantic
Grids-RG.
The information model being developed in this WG
had implications also for WS-Agreement, because
one aim for the work in SLAs was to validate the
provision of particular resource capability that had
been defined in the SLA. The set of terms that were
agreed upon in the information model and,
subsequently, the mechanisms to define constraints
on these terms would affect the types of applications
in which WS-Agreement could be deployed.
Certificate Authorities
The IGTF continued to focus on developing specialist
certificate authorities across the world to enable Grid
users to be authenticated in some uniform manner,
and enable resource sharing across multiple
administrative domains. Their aim in this session was
to highlight work that had already taken place within
various member organisations, such as European
GridPMA, work in the Asia-Pacific region, etc.
The discussion focused on identifying the structure of
a CA, for instance, should it be hierarchic or should it
be developed as a “bridge”? Further discussion was
focused on identifying what the architecture should
be for this.
What should the Identify Policy-OIDs that could be
associated with a particular CA be? It was also felt
that there was a need to verify the quality of identity
tokens that had been generated by middleware.
One discussion point focused on the need to build
support within existing middleware to be able to
support Policy-OIDs. There was a request for
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.32 Prof Omer Rana – Cardiff
namespace constraints and a request and decision
needed on Policy-OIDs. There was a question about
which middleware providers should this request be
directed to. The group needed to identify the level of
complexity that should be provided. There were also
requirements identified for externally-defined
namespace constraints so that relying parties can
uniquely assign namespaces for subject identifiers to
specific issuing authorities.
•
•
Session 2: Dynamic SLAs and Negotiation
•
WS-Agreement use in the CATNETs project
by Prof Rana
•
A Framework for WS-Agreement
Negotiation (in OntoGrid) by Valentina
Tamma
•
Semantic Support for WS-Agreement by
David de Roure
GridWorld
The GridWorld had over 3,500 registered
participants making this, possibly, one of the largest
Grid computing events in which Prof Rana had
participated. The participants were primarily from
Japan, with the presentations also reflecting these
particular demographics. Much of the discussion in
GridWorld focused on Web Services and
requirements for application deployment over
distributed infrastructure.
Future Actions
Based on Prof Rana’s participation at GGF17, his
future activities were as follows:
•
Provide comments on the Information Model for
OGSA-WG
•
Contribution to dynamic WS-Agreement use case
document, based on CATNETS and other SLAbased research at Cardiff
•
Contribution to GRAAP workshop hosted
alongside GGF-18.
Prof Rana also made contributions to drafting the
Call for Papers for this workshop.
•
Use of JSDL as for match-making and discussion
of extensions to JSDL.
•
Discussions at the GRAAP and JSDL sessions
formed the basis for material in the Grid
Workflow tutorial at the IEEE CCGrid 2006
conference, and discussions at the UK-Singapore
collaboration session at the GridAsia 2006
conference.
3.32.3
GGF18
Prof Rana attended GGF18 event from September 9
to September 14. Prof Rana participated in the
WS-Agreement workshop (for which he was also
co-organiser), the GRAAP sessions, the Provenance
Challenge, and the Mobile Devices and Grid session.
WS-Agreement Workshop
The WS-Agreement workshop was co-located with
the OGF, although it was not an official OGF event.
The intention was to encourage participation from
attendees at the OGF and to focus discussions at the
GRAAP sessions based on presentations within the
workshop. The workshop schedule was as follows:
•
Introduction to the workshop by Wolfgang
Ziegler
•
Session 1: Co-allocation Mechanisms
•
HPC4U and WS-Agreement by Matthias
Hovestadt
•
The VIOLA project by Oliver Waeldrich
AssessGrid: Risk Management in the Grid by
Karim Djemame and Matthias Hovestadt
The HPC4U project (www.hpc4u.eu) focused on
SLA-aware resource management, supporting
runtime adaptation and reliability by fault tolerant
mechanisms. The key focus in the project was the
development of software-only solutions for an SLAaware fault tolerant infrastructure, providing
reliability and QoS (acting as active Grid
components). The key features included:
•
Definition and implementation of SLAs
•
Resource reservation for providing guaranteed
QoS
In HPC4U a resource management system (RMS)
negotiates to define the content of new SLAs. Such an
RMS was expected to provide interface to Grid
middleware systems, and a negotiation module had
been introduced as a new RMS component. New
SLAs are only allowed if they can realise current
resource properties (that is, they do not violate
existing constraints defined by the resource
providers). In HPC4U, a cluster may be considered as
an active Grid component. The RMS negotiates with
the Grid infrastructure on spare resources and
supports migration in case of resource failures,
thereby leading to an increased level of fault
tolerance. Job assignments are provided to nodes
with particular performance characteristics, thereby
leading to the development of a topology dependent
mapping.
An SLA template is generated, and a filled out
template submitted. This template can either be
accepted or cancelled. (Currently, there is no support
for negotiation and no counter proposals are
generated). In the future, the RMS would drive the
negotiation process by evaluating the current
situation and accepting new SLAs based on current
resource usage. In this context, QoS-specific Service
Description Terms include:
•
Storage: redundancy, min. speed, etc
•
Checkpoint frequency
•
Security policy
•
Deadline for job completion (best effort,
in-advance reservation, etc)
It was suggested that the use of JSDL would be the
most appropriate representation of this, as this could
also be extended with additional domain dependent
terms.
The HPC4U project felt that implementation of the
WS-Agreement protocol stack was a time-consuming
process, and that they might not be able to complete
a full implementation of the specification. They
indicated that they would instead be able to evaluate
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3.32 Prof Omer Rana – Cardiff
WS-Agreement implementations from other projects,
if these were made available to them, and report back
on their benefits within HPC4U. They were therefore
willing to work with other projects to gather new
requirements and test/evaluate whether these
systems can be coupled as part of interoperability
testing. It was also indicated that HPC4U project
would be able to provide use cases to the WSAgreement effort.
The WS-Agreement for Risk Management in the
Grid presentation primarily focused on work to be
undertaken in the recently funded AssessGrid
project. A key focus was investigating SLA violations
due to various reasons (such as denial of service
attacks), and identifying penalties to be associated
with these violations. Such violations could also be
used to identify which party had been involved in
breaking the agreement.
Such risk assessment could also be used to identify
bottleneck indicators for system planning, such as
acceptable price and penalty regarding current risk
and effort. A key question to be considered was the
risk associated with assigning an SLA to a provider.
In this way, a provider could estimate reliability of
service provision (for their own services). Risk
indicators were introduced as a core part of SLA
negotiation, primarily to present risk in a way that
would help to improve confidence/trustfulness of a
service. It was pointed out that such risk assessment
was intended to help a provider improve its own
service provision capability, and not intended to
support building of “reputation” of a provider within
a system (at least in the first instance).
The VIOLA project involved the development of a
meta-scheduling service to distribute parallel jobs,
providing insurance that the application jobs would
have suitable resources to execute. A reservation
mechanism was supported to provide such
guarantees. The project made use of a UNICORE
client which sent requests to a meta-scheduler (using
a WS-Agreement template). The meta-scheduler
determined the earliest time to run a job – requiring
reservation of requested resources - and returned an
ID. It was necessary, therefore, to have capabilities to
reserve resources in the network and bind to run time
data about reservation information. It was assumed
that reservations are valid for a particular time
period. WS-Agreement does not provide native
support for agreement negotiation, and the VIOLA
project therefore proposed different types of
agreements (to achieve reliable co-allocation) to
address this deficiency. Three types of agreements
are being defined:
•
Declaration of Intention Agreement
These specify an “intention to provide” (and may
be unreliable and short lived). These agreements
may be changed by the provider to reflect current
resource usage, and have no costs, rewards or
penalties associated with them.
•
Preparation Agreement
These have a restricted lifetime, but are more
reliable than Declaration of Intention
agreements. They represent a prior reservation of
resources and may have associated costs, rewards
and penalties depending on the charging policy
being used.
Page 146
•
Commit Agreement
These extend Preparation Agreements (PAs), and
may be used to confirm that a resource user is
going to use the previously reserved resources in
a PA. Based on these, the costs, rewards and
penalties become effective.
It was possible that conflicts could appear at each of
these three levels. There was currently no specific
language or description scheme in place to specify
costs, rewards and penalties.
There was also an intention to support multi-party
SLAs. Essentially, to begin with, a single SLA from a
client was identified. This was then sent to a metascheduler, which split this into multiple agreements,
aggregated results and presented these back to the
user.
During the discussion session, the CREMONA
implementation of WS-Agreement (from IBM) was
identified. It was mentioned that this has a strict IPR
policy and projects wishing to use this may not be
able to access the source code. The EU NEXTGrid
project was also considering WS-Agreement,
although they had decided to implement their own
SLA model. It was also generally agreed that the Job
Submission Description Language (JSDL) provided
an important ‘inner language’ for specifying resource
properties, and should be used within an
interoperability test.
The dynamic SLAs and negotiation session primarily
focused on the need to extend WS-Agreement with
support for negotiation. Two possible directions were
identified:
•
Extend WS-Agreement protocol to allow a multishot interaction process.
This would also imply inclusion of more complex
message types. Some of these extensions had
already been reported in literature 10.
•
Develop negotiation mechanisms as a layer
above the existing WS-Agreement to enable a
“compositional” approach (as already proposed
in WS-Agreement, by separation into the
agreement layer and the service layer).
Based on this approach, any negotiation
mechanism may be used, eventually resulting in
some SLA that could then be specified with WSAgreement.
The OntoGrid was developing mechanisms to
structure service exchanges between a client and
provider. The project provided well defined templates
for specifying agreements, such as service description
terms and guarantee terms. The aim was to use the
ContractNet protocol that makes use of WSAgreement based messages. WS-Agreement with WSContract Net Protocol (WS-CNP) therefore provided
a refinement of decision making process, and allowed
for multiparty decision making. Other negotiation
protocols were also being considered in the project,
such as an extended Contract Net and English
Auctions. First deployment was expected by end of
September.
10
S. Paurobally and N. R. Jennings (2005).
Developing Agent Web Service Agreements. The
2005 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on
Web Intelligence (WI 2005). Sept. 2005, France.
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3.32 Prof Omer Rana – Cardiff
Dave De Roure identified how the Semantic Grid
approaches could be useful for WS-Agreement
activities, in particular how the RDF/RDFS based
representation could be used to encode relationships
between service users and providers. He emphasised
the need to better understand work being undertaken
in negotiation mechanisms within the multi-agent
systems community, and to evaluate how this existing
work affected WS-Agreement efforts. He provided a
number of examples where negotiation mechanisms
could prove useful, based on existing e-Science
projects that have been reported at the GGF Semantic
Grid events.
performed. Furthermore, the volatility of the
environment of a mobile Grid made it difficult, nigh
impossible, to agree on one single fixed SLA for the
duration of interaction. A differentiation was made
between a BaseVO (one that was always expected to
be present) and an OptVO (which was dynamically
created). The negotiation was carried out in four
steps:
1. Make use of a set of templates (BaseVO creation)
so that everything is possible.
2. Move from templates to “bundles”.
This could be online, based on semantic
descriptions of QoS, as one template could be
instantiated several times.
GRAAP Sessions
The GRAAP sessions aimed to learn from the
outcomes of the workshop, and identify ways in
which WS-Agreement could be used to support
negotiation. The first session was primarily devoted
to explaining the general structure and use of the
agreement to those new to the specification.
The second session started with a presentation about
SLA negotiation in NextGRID and Akogrimo projects,
and was delivered by Bastian Koller from HLRSStuttgart. He explained the creation of a NextGRID
SLA Schema as a way to support generalised
specification for SLA Management. The approach
consisted of a customer domain and a service
provider domain.
The customer domain consisted of a Business Level
Object (BLO) component that was transferred to a
“Negotiator”, also maintained by a customer.
Similarly, a service provider would also maintain a
Negotiator which would interact with the same
component in the customer domain. Interaction was
achieved by sending bids to the Negotiator (from the
customer) and obtaining offers (via an Offer
Manager) from the provider. A service provider
would make an offer based on QoS History, the BLO
component involved, etc. This could be one of the
following:
•
A single shot process – a customer may only
choose from a set of Offers (and may not ask for
another bid/offer) – thereby leading to a focus on
a discrete offer protocol
•
A multi-phase negotiation, where the discrete
offer protocol was extended to n-phases
The next steps in the project were to implement the
VO management components involved in managing
bids and offers based on SLAs. It was expected that
there would be a WS-Agreement implementation also
in the project from the Jeulich Research Center.
In the AkoGrimo project, users and providers of Grid
Services can be nomadic or mobile. Such users and
providers therefore need to deal with a fast changing
context (bandwidth, quality of connection, device
capabilities, etc). Hence, users and providers have
some kind of contract that limits the potential
services that can be used. In the project, SLA
negotiation was found to be a useful requirement and
was implemented in way that was very close to the
WS-Agreement specification. It was explained that
the negotiation process already took a long time, even
when considering pre-defined agreement templates.
In Akogrimo, both static (non-negotiable) and
negotiable terms in SLA needed to be present to
ensure that legal requirements were met, and to limit
the set of parameters on which negotiation could be
3. Employ service discovery using the desired
profile/bundle as a search parameter to filter out
service providers that would never say “yes” in a
negotiation.
4. Set up mechanisms to choose a particular bundle.
The discussion in the remainder of the session was
focused on how WS-Agreement specification could be
implemented, and how interoperability testing could
be undertaken on different implementations. It was
generally agreed that a subset of JSDL would be used
in the first instance to identify terms, and
implementations across various European projects
would be used as the basis for interoperability tests (a
necessary requirement for the GGF/OGF
standardisation process). The European projects who
have expressed an interest to participate include:
•
HPC4U
•
CATNETs
•
VIOLA
Other implementations from EGEE and IBM’s
CREMONA would also be explored.
It was also agreed that use cases for negotiation and
dynamic agreements would be useful to obtain, and
three projects agreed to provide these, namely
HPC4U, OntoGrid and VIOLA. This led to the third
GRAAP session which focused on how negotiation
mechanisms could be used alongside WS-Agreement.
It was discussed that negotiation had been taken out
of WS-Agreement specification because it was
deemed to be too complex. There was earlier work on
trying to develop a WS-Negotiation specification, but
limited progress had been made on this.
Various types of negotiation were identified – hence
“haggling negotiation” – when the Agreement was
being made, and were considered too complex to
model. However, identifying the types of haggling
that could be permissible could be provided as part of
the creation constraints. A more useful form of
negotiation was considered to be modification
negotiation, that is, how could an agreement that had
already been made be modified? Here, the intention
was to specify modifications necessary to an already
made agreement, and mechanisms that would be
needed to reference a previous instance of the
agreement (using an EPR). Modification specification
could relate to Service Description Terms (SDTs) or
the expiration period, for instance.
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3.32 Prof Omer Rana – Cardiff
It was also necessary to identify rendezvous points,
that is, places where parameters within an agreement
could be modified. This could also be made part of a
negotiation protocol. A related question asked at
what point in the service execution life cycle should
or could the contract be negotiated to ensure that
there was some continuity of the on-going process?
This was particularly true for a long running process
where modifications to parameters needed some
coordination. The modification process was also
required to specify what changes would be allowed
and what would constitute a new agreement,
compared to a modified version of a previous one.
Here ‘time’ was a parameter in the agreement that
was required to be treated in a special way. It was
generally agreed that additional discussion was
necessary on this topic, and further work would
continue via email interactions and teleconference
discussions.
Provenance Challenge
The Provenance Challenge workshop required
participants to demonstrate how their particular
system could be used to answer a pre-defined set of
queries on a given workflow. A key theme in the
challenge was to identify common issues that were
found to be of interest in different Provenance
systems and ways in which queries could be
answered. A total of 17 groups participated in the
challenge.
A large number of groups made use of SQL or
relational databases to record interactions between
actors involved in a workflow. Many found the
relational model to be of benefit, except when trying
to compare two workflow graphs.
Cardiff University (represented by Vikas Deora and
Prof Rana) participated in the challenge by providing
visualisation tools that could be used alongside the
p-struct schema developed by Southampton
University.
•
Two talks on healthcare services that could be
offered via sensor-based devices, and integration
of these into a personalised health management
systems
•
Integrating peer-2-peer technologies (P2PS)
This was primarily based on the JXTA system
from Sun Microsystems, with ns-2 network
simulator, for better understanding
communication delays and scalability issues
within a sensor network.
The benefits of the P2P system were outlined,
along with a discussion of the AjentJ simulator
used to integrate P2PS with ns2.
Prof Rana delivered a talk on the DTI-funded
Healthcare@Home project, which was investigating
how data from medical sensors could be acquired and
analysed for trends analysis. The project focused on
monitoring parameters that were most relevant in the
context of diabetes management, with particular
focus on the recent NHS National Services
Framework, identifying care pathways for individual
patients. Grid-based data mining/analysis was being
used in the project to undertake trends analysis.
3.32.4
Prof Rana attended OGF19 from January 28 to
February 2. Prof Rana participated in the following
sessions:
•
The GRAAP working group, focusing on
WS-Agreement specification
•
The Semantic Web workshop, organised by Dave
de Roure and Carole Goble
•
The OGSA group, particularly the workflow and
information model discussion.
•
The Quality of Service BoF, organised by Steve
McGough
•
The workshop on Reliability and Dependability,
organised by Chris Dubrowski and Geoffrey Fox
•
The Software Providers tracks on OMII and Grid
Sphere
Information Model
Not much progress has taken place in the OGSA
Information Model group since the last GGF meeting
in Tokyo. There was still an emphasis on modelling
static resource properties, and relating some of the
terms being used to JSDL. The most significant
update involved the development of simple
description examples to illustrate how the
information model could be used in practice.
Mobile Devices and Grid
The Aggregating Mobile Devices with Grid working
group has taken on various other names in the past –
including Resource and Appliance Aggregation. The
focus has primarily been on mechanisms to integrate
wireless devices and sensor networks with Grid
infrastructure. Previous talks at sessions of this group
have ranged from discussion of RFID tags as a means
to acquire data to mechanisms to network home
appliances and use this as a means to undertake
computation.
This particular session had a total of five talks:
•
Mobile agent techniques for managing workload
within a cluster/Grid environment
•
Integration of sensors and mobile devices for
military and naval scenarios
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OGF19
GRAAP Working Group
Although three sessions were scheduled for the
GRAAP working group, the group were able to
resolve outstanding issues in two sessions. The first
session focused on public comments that had been
received on the WS-Agreement specification.
Wolfgang Ziegler flagged the issues and identified
how these issues were being addressed in the updated
specification. It was expected that the specification
document would be modified to reflect these
comments within the four weeks following the OGF
meeting.
There was also discussion about WS-Agreement
interoperability, and which aspects of interoperability
would be most useful to demonstrate across different
WS-Agreement implementations. It was generally
agreed that interoperability at the level of the
protocol was too simple. A teleconference was
scheduled for the individuals/groups involved in the
implementation of the WS-Agreement specification.
Participants from the Fraunhofer Institute, Cardiff
University, Juelich Research Center and University of
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3.32 Prof Omer Rana – Cardiff
Paderborn would be invited to participate in the
teleconference. Based on feedback from the OGF area
directors, it was identified that an information
document (that would be reviewed) would be needed
to outline the operations that would be involved in
the interoperability test(s).
There was also discussion about the general area of
dynamic SLAs, and identifying precisely what was
implied by this term. For instance, many coming to
WS-Agreement sessions in the past had identified the
need for including negotiation within the
WS-Agreement specification. However, it was, once
again, generally agreed that negotiation was too
complex to support in the current version of the
specification. It was proposed that perhaps the group
should consider negotiation profiles, similar to the
HPC Profile that had been proposed by other groups
at OGF. This was found to be a useful middle option,
and this aspect would be considered at a future
session.
Semantic Web Workshop
The Semantic Web 2.0 workshop focused on two
main themes:
•
Usability issues associated with existing
e-Science software
•
How emerging themes such as mashups and
gadgets (from Google) could be used to support
dynamic user interfaces
A tutorial, by Pamela Fox and Marlon Pierce, on
mashups and Web 2.0 technologies identified the
ease of creating a mashup using the Google API. The
tutorial stressed how this approach could be used to
provide quick prototypes. It was recognised that
there were too many Web Services (WS-*) standards
currently in existence, and it was often hard to
identify how they related to each other. It was also
difficult for new programmer to decide which of these
to focus on. Marlon Pierce demonstrated the use of
the Google maps API, and how additional data could
be combined with the maps provided by Google.
Geoffrey Fox also indicated that mashups were
similar to workflows – as they involved integration of
a number of capabilities to generate an output –
which could then be displayed through a Web
browser. Prof Rana disagreed with this view, for the
following reasons:
1. A mashup can involve combining capabilities of a
number of services (in this sense, they are
somewhat similar to the outcome of a workflow
process); however, the actual process involved is
never fully exposed, unlike a workflow.
2. Workflows involve a combination of different
control strategies that indicate how service
interaction should take place. Often, this control
flow is also exposed to some enactment tool. In a
mashup, this is not undertaken.
This workshop provided a good discussion of
semantic Web technologies that could be used to
develop user interfaces for scientists. The
relationship between mashups and portals was not
fully explored, although these seemed to be (at a first
glance) complementary technologies.
OGSA Workflow and Information
Model Discussion
The OGSA information model working group
discussion focused mainly on the use of XQuery over
JSDL and BES documents. The work in this group
was rather sluggish at the time, although good overall
progress was being made by Ellen Stokes. It was not
immediately clear, however, what additional benefit
the approach being proposed in this group offered
above Condor ClassAds and the Redline System from
Argonne. In addition, significant work in semantic
match-making was being ignored by the group,
especially the work undertaken in the multi-agent
systems community.
It was also recognised that there was a need to
support workflow descriptions in the OGSA
architecture. The OGSA workflow discussion was led
by Andrew Grimshaw (University of Virginia). The
discussion was primarily focused on whether it was
necessary to extend OGSA with workflow
descriptions, or whether the group should interact
with other external work, of which a significant
amount already existed. The need for workflow was
based on the inability, at present, to identify job
dependencies in OGSA. A middle ground was
advocated and multiple groups have been identified
to do the following tasks:
1. Identify what was already in existence.
2. Explore what extensions would be necessary to
support workflow in OGSA.
3. Investigate what types of workflow would be
useful to see in OGSA.
Cardiff were to participate in task 1.
Quality of Service BoF
The QoS BoF was organised due to a number of
requests at OGSA working group sessions in the past.
Many people had expressed an interest in providing a
more concise view of QoS. The QoS BoF consisted of
three talks:
•
The use of QoS metrics to support replica
management (Mark Morgan, University of
Virginia);
•
The G-QoSM project—identifying relationship
between QoS metrics and Service Level
Agreements (Prof Rana);
•
The use of QoS in the GridCC project (Steve
McGough, Imperial College).
The subsequent discussion focused on providing a
more concise definition of QoS. Many at the BoF were
concerned that a more precise list of metrics that
could be associated with QoS were required, and
often the distinction between QoS and an SLA was
not clear. Members of the networks community
present at the BoF identified that QoS had
well-defined semantics in the context of network
applications (focusing on bandwidth, latency, packet
delay and packet jitter), and that similarly, the Grid
community should consider the end-to-end QoS that
could aggregate quality metrics across an application,
middleware and the network layers. It was agreed
that to keep the task manageable, a focus on QoS
metrics associated with the OGSA would be a useful
starting point.
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3.32 Prof Omer Rana – Cardiff
Service Level Agreements were one of the key
topics of discussion. The workshop was funded
by the EPSRC “Agentcities.UK” network—with
secretarial support from NeSC. This workshop
was jointly organised by Julian Padget (Bath
University) and Omer Rana. Members of the
Semantic Web community (such as researchers
in the EU TrustCom, EU OntoGrid, OMII
Knoogle, EPSRC DiscoveryNet, EU SORMA, EU
CATNETS and EU BREIN projects) participated
in the workshop. The event was therefore also
intended to provide cross fertilisation between
Semantic Grids and SLAs.
Reliability and Dependability
Workshop
The Reliability and Dependability workshop was
centred on:
•
Providing a more precise view on reliability
issues in the context of Grid applications
•
Mechanisms that could be used to adapt the
underlying infrastructure to support reliability
The workshop consisted of a number of talks from
academic researchers and infrastructure providers
outlining what they considered to be reliability issues,
and their particular perspectives on supporting a
more adaptive infrastructure.
A common theme in many of the talks was the ability
to monitor running applications for “exceptional”
behaviour, and using actuation mechanisms to
re-schedule, re-start or terminate error-prone
applications.
The actuation approaches were primarily based on
feedback control system ideas, whereby a change in
system state from some ideal would be monitored,
and the system pushed to move towards this idea (or
controllable) state. Example traces from an
application executed over the TeraGrid was used to
demonstrate the ideas. It was interesting to see many
similarities between the techniques being discussed
by the authors and approaches being advocated
within the Autonomic Computing community. It was
generally recognised, however, that supporting
suitable actuation was a difficult process in a
distributed environment.
Software Providers Track – OMII and
GridSphere
The Software Providers track was being introduced
at the OGF for the first time. It was a very useful
introduction to many software libraries for Grid
computing. The OMII track primarily focused on the
OMII projects that are now available for use (such as
OGSA-DAI, GRIMOIRES, etc.) and newly funded
projects that are expected to deliver over the next
year.
The GridSphere session focused on changes that have
been made to the GridSphere Portal Development
Tools, and introduced the Vines software that will
provide an API that can be used alongside
GridSphere. The Vines API can be used in a
standalone mode, and could provide capability that
could be integrated with user applications.
Next Steps
Prof Rana was engaged in the following subsequent
to this OGF meeting:
•
A teleconference was organised to focus on
discussing interoperability tests that need to be
carried out between two (or more)
WS-Agreement implementations.
This telcon was intended to define the basis for
an information document on WS-Agreement
interoperability.
•
A workshop at the National e-Science Centre in
Edinburgh with a particular focus on agent-based
Grid computing.
Page 150
•
A workshop was proposed at OGF20 in
Manchester (in May 2007), consisting of two 90minute sessions. The focus at this workshop was
on Dynamic Service Level Agreements. This
workshop was jointly organised by Wolfgang
Ziegler (Fraunhofer Institute), Philipp Weider
(Jeulich Research Center) and Prof Rana.
3.32.5
OGF20
Prof Rana attended OGF20 in Manchester, May 7–11,
2007.
A key message from this particular meeting was the
increasing focus on Web 2.0 and social networkbased technologies to support collaboration between
application users. Web 2.0 technologies (such as the
Google Programming API, AJAX, JSON, etc) provide
ease-of- use and development in comparison with
many of the existing Web Services specifications.
Prof Rana participated in the following activities:
•
Co-organiser: Dynamic Service Level
Agreements Workshop
•
Participant: SOKU Workshop
•
Participant: GRAAP working group sessions
•
Speaker: Workflow working group session
•
Participant: SAGA API session
•
Participant: Service Level Terms for OGSA BoF
GRAAP
The GRAAP working group involved three sessions,
focusing on the currently released specification of
WS-Agreement. The first session was dedicated to
presentations from European projects in the area,
such as AssessGrid, which focused on aspects of risk
assessment in service provisioning.
The second session focused on discussion of
negotiation protocols that can be used alongside
WS-Agreement. The discussion focused on two key
points:
1. Whether a two phase commit protocol was a
useful protocol to support
2. Whether negotiation should be part of
WS-Agreement, or whether it could be something
undertaken outside the specification, but could
make use of terms/schema of WS-Agreement.
The key concern regarding issue 1 related to whether
reliable messaging could be guaranteed when a
provider was making an offer to a client. It was
argued that message delays could lead to a provider
having to wait for approval from a client, thus
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3.32 Prof Omer Rana – Cardiff
reducing the ability of a provider to offer resources to
other clients. Relationship with such models in
databases was also discussed. Issue 2 remained an
open concern in the GRAAP working group, as some
felt that negotiation should be an integral part of the
WS-Agreement specification. Prof Rana disagreed
with this, especially as it was likely to make the
specification more complex.
The final session of GRAAP focused on identifying
interoperability experiments that needed to be
undertaken once the GRAAP specification had been
approved. Discussion in this session mainly focused
on identifying what type of interoperability work was
necessary, and what needed to be implemented to
demonstrate interoperability. Currently, four
research groups are involved in implementing the
WS-Agreement specification, to varying extents.
These include the Fraunhofer Institute, the
University of Stuttgart, the Tech. University of Berlin
and Cardiff University. It was generally agreed that
coordination between these groups was necessary,
and it would be useful to identify what
interoperability tests could be undertaken between
these groups. A document has been started that
outlines these interoperability tests, the first version
of which was discussed and started at OGF20.
coordinate the execution of a workflow was also
stressed, where the portal would interact with
workflow enactment engines, allowing a workflow to
be split across such engines.
Evaluation from OGF19
After the OGF meeting, Prof Rana was engaged in the
following related activities:
•
This teleconference was intended to define the
basis for an information document on WSAgreement interoperability.
Outcome: The telcon was organised and led to
the first working document outlining
interoperability tests needed.
•
The Dynamic SLAs workshop was organised to
emphasise the importance of identifying and
managing SLAs where:
1. SLOs can change during service execution.
2. A SLO description scheme allows for changes in
SLOs during service provisioning to prevent an
excessive number of violations from being raised.
The workshop included a number of presentations
from European projects (mainly), such as AssessGrid,
BREIN, BeinGrid, Grid Job Scheduling and HPC4U.
A panel session to assess the importance of dynamic
SLAs with reference to business and scientific
applications was organised. There were three
panellists in the session. Three outcomes of the panel
session were:
Outcome: The workshop was successfully
organised with over 25 participants from the UK
and Europe. TrustCom, OntoGrid, OMII,
DiscoveryNet, SORMA, CATNETS, eRep, and
other projects were presented. A document
outlining use cases of agent-based approaches in
Grid computing was started. Currently over 10
use cases have been identified.
•
2. It was useful to consider intervals when defining
SLA properties to ensure that a provider was able
to deal with small changes in provisioning and
still remain within valid limits.
Outcome: The workshop was successfully
organised and included participation of Karim
Djemame (from Leeds University) as a coorganiser.
It was expected that a use case document would be
produced to address issues 1 and 2 in particular.
The Sharing Workflows workshop focused on the
need for sharing workflow descriptions and
subsequently mechanisms to enact workflows across
different engines. A variety of views were presented,
from the need to support semantic annotations on
abstract workflow graphs to support for plug-ins that
allow workflow enactment to take place in their
“native” environment. The use of a portal to
A workshop was proposed for OGF20 in
Manchester (in May 2007) consisting of two 90minute sessions.
The focus at this workshop was on Dynamic
Service Level Agreements. This workshop was
jointly organised by Wolfgang Ziegler
(Fraunhofer Institute), Philipp Weider (Jeulich
Research Center) and Prof Rana.
3. It would be useful to identify which communities
would benefit from dynamic SLAs, and whether
suitable use cases could be provided to guide the
development of such SLAs.
Sharing Workflows Workshop
A workshop was held at the National e-Science
Centre in Edinburgh with a particular focus on
Agent-based Grid Computing. SLAs were to form
one of the key topics of discussion.
The workshop was funded by the EPSRC
“Agentcities.UK” network with secretarial
support from NeSC. This workshop was jointly
organised by Julian Padget (Bath University) and
Prof Rana. Members of the Semantic Web
community (such as researchers in the EU
TrustCom, EU OntoGrid, OMII Knoogle, EPSRC
DiscoveryNet, EU SORMA, EU CATNETS and
EU BREIN projects) participated in the
workshop. The event was, therefore, also
intended to provide cross- fertilisation between
Semantic Grids and SLAs.
Dynamic SLAs Workshop
1. It was necessary to precisely define what
constituted “dynamic” SLA, as compared to
“static” SLAs.
A teleconference was organised to focus on
discussing interoperability tests that needed to be
carried out between two (or more)
WS-Agreement implementations.
Future Activities
The following future activities were planned to take
place during GridNet2:
•
Additional work on the use-case document
outlining use of agent-based approaches in Grids.
•
Additional work on interoperability tests and
coordination between WS-Agreement
implementations.
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3.32 Prof Omer Rana – Cardiff
Prof Rana also planned and co-organised workshops
at the ACM/IEEE 2007 conference.
3.32.6
OGF21
Prof Rana attended OGF21. Web 2.0 and social
network-based technologies continued to provide an
important new growth area. Prof Rana participated in
the following activities:
•
Participant: GRAAP working group sessions
•
Participant: Arts and Humanities Research
Group (newly formed)
•
Participant: JSDL working group
•
Co-organiser: GridNet2 e-Science Workshop
GRAAP
The GRAAP working group involved three sessions,
focusing on the currently released specification of
WS-Agreement.
The first session was dedicated to discussion about
interoperability and conformance testing of
implementations to the current specification. Two
implementations of WS-Agreement were identified –
one from the Fraunhofer Institute and the other from
Technical University of Berlin. The aim of this first
session was to discuss the current status of these
implementations and when these were likely to be
made available to the general Grid community. A key
point of discussion in this context related to
identifying what aspects of the specification needed
to be tested within the interoperability experiments.
For instance, if the inner language was being
considered, then perhaps this would be testing a job
submission system (considering JSDL being used),
and perhaps not the WS-Agreement specification in
particular. No particular consensus was reached, and
further discussion is necessary to identify use cases
for interoperability testing. A Wiki has been set up,
and one scenario has so far been described. The next
steps in this context involve identifying additional
scenarios.
The second session focused on identifying
“microspecs” that could be used as inner languages
within WS-Agreement. Currently, JSDL, BES and a
Network microspec are being considered. The group
discussed whether it was necessary to consider a
subset of the existing JSDL specification for
interoperability experiments, and more specifically,
which tags from JSDL should be used for this
purpose.
The third session was focused on discussion of
negotiation protocols that can be used alongside
WS-Agreement. It was generally agreed that
negotiation was seen as an additional capability that
could be built above the existing WS-Agreement
specification. Because the specification had recently
been approved, there was reluctance to make any
modifications to the specification in its current form,
until interoperability and conformance tests of
existing implementations were completed.
GridNet2 e-Science Workshop
This workshop was organised in collaboration with
Dr Ian Taylor (Cardiff) and Dr Stephen McGough
(Imperial College), and had the following objectives:
Page 152
1. To highlight work that the UK e-Science
community was doing at the OGF and in related
standards bodies (such as W3C).
2. To support interaction between people from the
UK and others interested in efforts within the UK
e-Science community.
3. To encourage working across different working
groups because many people in GridNet2 were
active participants in OGF.
The workshop involved presentations from a number
of GridNet2-funded researchers. More details and
presentation slides are available on the Wiki:
http://wiki.cs.cf.ac.uk/twiki/bin/view/Sandbox/Ope
nGridForum21
The workshop demonstrated a number of overlaps in
interests across the different participants funded by
GridNet2. It was generally agreed that a UK
dissemination event would be useful, perhaps to take
place alongside the UK e-Science AHM. Such an
event could focus purely on standards activities.
Attendance at the workshop was rather disappointing
overall. However, the discussion towards the end of
the workshop, focusing on GridNet2 sustainability,
was useful and interesting.
JSDL Working Group
The JSDL working group sessions focused on
comparing terms supported in existing Grid
scheduling systems, such as GridWay, Globus,
UNICORE and Genesis II. The discussion covered the
terms that were likely to be important when
considering job submission across these different
systems. The part of the discussion looking at similar
experiences when developing the DRMAA API was
interesting.
Arts and Humanities Research Group
The Arts and Humanities Research Group began with
two invited talks, focusing primarily on UK and
European-funded projects in this area. The first was
given by Alexander Voss (Edinburgh University) and
the second (via a telcon. link) by Tobias Blanke
(Kings College London). It was interesting to see the
very wide range of projects being undertaken in this
area, and overlap of interests with other areas of
e-Science, such as the significant emphasis on
intellectual property rights. Arts and Humanities
provide a useful new domain that could provide new
requirements for e-Science.
Interestingly, Tobias Blanke outlined the need for
workflow systems, data management and semantic
annotations to existing data archives, as being some
of the key technology enablers for arts and
humanities applications.
3.32.7
OGF22
Prof Rana attended OGF22. A significant focus in this
particular OGF was on application users and how
they are currently making use of Grid computing
technologies. Prof Rana participated in the following
activities:
•
Participant: GRAAP working group sessions
•
Participant: Enterprise Adoption: Enabling the
Next Generation IT Infrastructure workshop
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.32 Prof Omer Rana – Cardiff
•
Participant: Financial Services workshop
•
Participant: Cloud Computing BoF
•
Participant: Data Management workshop
GRAAP
The GRAAP working group involved three sessions –
focusing on two main themes:
1. Interoperability between two WS-Agreement
implementations
2. Re-negotiation protocol
The interoperability session began with a
presentation by Oliver Waldrich on comparing two
WS-Agreement implementations, one from the
Fraunhofer institute and the other from the Technical
University of Berlin. The aim was to demonstrate that
two versions of WS-Agreement could work together,
even though they did not make use of a common code
base. Each implementation also made use of the
agreement states discussed in the specification, and
would also test the factory service used to create a
new agreement template. As WS-Agreement made
use of other Web Service standards such as
WS-Naming and WSRF, it was apparent during this
discussion that it was actually interoperability
between naming conventions that had been the key
stumbling block in undertaking interoperation. A
proxy was used to support the translation between
the two naming schemes in the demonstration
provided by Oliver. It was therefore realised that
additional work was needed to identify what precisely
constituted WS-Agreement interoperability, and the
approach adopted by other working groups – such as
GIN – would be considered. The key idea would be to
develop a client-server application, where Service
Level Agreements (SLAs) encoded using
WS-Agreement would be sent to the server to validate
their conformance to the specification.
The re-negotiation session focused on discussion
around a paper, A Contract Re-negotiation Protocol,
that had previously been submitted by Michael
Parkin, Peer Hasselmeyer, Bastian Koller and Philipp
Wieder, as part of work being undertaken in the
European NEXTGrid/BREIN projects. The paper
discussed a re-negotiation protocol that could be
utilised in environments where messages could be
delayed. The authors argued that the approach
adopted within the WS-Agreement specification (and
subsequent discussions in the GRAAP working
group) focused on maintaining strong consistency of
state using transactional protocols using a two phase
commit approach. The authors proposed that such an
approach was wasteful of resources and could also
lead to their under-utilisation. They also indicated
that such an approach would be difficult of use in
environments where messages could be delayed, or
where strong legal constraints needed to be satisfied.
They, instead, proposed a protocol that utilised loose
consistency. A very simple state machine
representation and the associated messages that were
needed within the protocol were discussed.
Overall, the proposal received good feedback during
the session, although there was no general agreement
if this particular protocol should be adopted within a
future version of WS-Agreement. Negotiation issues
remain important concerns for the GRAAP working
group, although due to the diverging views on the
associated protocols, no particular approach has been
accepted.
Enterprise Adoption, Financial
Services and Data Management
The Enterprise Adoption and Financial Services
workshops had a significant overlap in speakers and
themes. Both workshops focused on how various
industrial users were making use of Grid computing
in-house, ranging from the use of Condor to specialist
data storage facilities. It was clear from listening to
the speakers that what constituted Grid computing
for many of these industries differed significantly.
Some people referred to their data centre as being a
Grid, whereas others considered such a definition to
encompass a small/specialist cluster.
John Barr from the 451 Group provided a useful
survey about the particular industry sectors that were
interested/using Grid computing. His discussion of
an API to support the financial services industry
provided a useful integration point for common
services that could be made available over a Grid
infrastructure. However, he also mentioned that
many in the financial services community were happy
to agree on common infrastructure standards, but
were reluctant to identify specialist services that they
made available to their in-house users. Consequently,
the API for financial services that he was intending to
develop did not get traction in the business world,
and had to be abandoned.
The data management workshop primarily focused
on work from the Storage Network Industry
Association (SNIA) and their work on standards such
as parallel NFS (in association with the IETF) and
XAM. There was also discussion about supporting
data management at different levels in the Grid, from
information models for knowledge management to
the lower-level resource management that was the
focus of SNIA.
Cloud Computing
Geoffrey Fox led a BoF on cloud computing, and the
benefits that such a technology could bring. He
identified the “cloud” as being a coarse-grained
abstraction compared to the “service” abstraction.
Interaction between clouds would therefore involve
looser coupling than between services. The exact
distinction, however, was not clear to Prof Rana
because much of the work in services was already
attempting to address some of the concerns that
Geoffrey raised.
Prior to the BoF was a keynote from IBM about
utilizing the Cloud abstraction to create better
resource ensembles and creating high speed
interconnection networks that would link these
ensembles. The BoF identified the formation of
Inter- and Intra-Grids, emphasising the considerable
industry benefits that could arise from linking such
infrastructure together, using high speed networks.
Existing focus of vendors such as Amazon in their S3
and EC2 Cloud offerings indicates industry interest.
The aim of the BoF was to create a new activity at the
OGF to focus on this emerging technology. This was
likely to be a useful new direction for the OGF. It
would be useful for the OGF community to
investigate the validity of the current standards they
propose in the context of such cloud computing
infrastructure. Prof Rana did not believe significant
differences existed at the present time, although
future interoperability standards in cloud computing
might prove to be different from those in Web
Services.
Page 153
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.33 Dr Matthew Shields – Cardiff
3.33
Dr Matthew Shields
– Cardiff
executing workflows should not be lost through
the process of sharing.
•
myExperiment and social software for workflow
sharing (David De Roure, University of
Southampton and OMII-UK) introduced Web2.0
paradigms to workflow sharing.
•
WHIP (Andrew Harrison, Cardiff University)
sharing workflows between desktop tools and
collaborative Web portals
Dr Matthew Shields is a research associate at Cardiff
University.
For a summary of Dr Shields’ GridNet2 activites, see
section 2.33, Dr Matthew Shields – Cardiff.
3.33.1
OGF20
The comments compared approaches to Web
application mashup, which was really more like
an agent system.
WFM-RG – Sharing Workflows
The WFM-RG session on sharing workflows was the
most important session both in terms of Dr Shields’
interest and the basis of the proposal under which Dr
Shields received the GridNet2 funding, namely to
assist restarting interest and activity in the research
group. Dr Shields’ contribution to the session
consisted of taking notes and participating in the
group discussions, and kick-starting the group’s
research document, details of which follow.
The session focused on the current perceived need to
be able to share workflows for scientific applications
between scientists, both within and external to the
groups performing the science. Unlike previous
standardisation efforts for creating a single common
workflow language that could be adopted by all tools
and execution engines, the session’s focus was on
sharing workflows between differing tools using
diverse workflow language representations.
Ian Taylor opened the session by contrasting the
views of the OGSA workflow group, where the
predominant view was that of a standard workflow
language, with the views of the WFM group
members, where diverse tools and languages existed.
An analogy was drawn with a conventional
programming paradigm and trying to force
programmers to adopt a common editor, language
and compiler or interpreter. There are lots of coexisting systems so the focus should be on the
scientists, helping them to share workflows.
Comments on Ian’s opening included: asking if a
study has been done on whether there was a real need
for scientific workflow; how many Grid applications
actually used workflow; and the point was made that
workflows often work better with Grids than other
applications so problems were often thought of in
workflow terms. It was proposed that the next group
output should be an OGF research report on
workflow sharing.
Following Ian, there were a number of presenters
focusing on:
•
Levels of interoperability (Adrian Toth,
University of Miskolc) and standardisation
efforts within industry, WFMC, OASIS, OMG
The comments discussed the relationship
between abstract definitions (XPDL) and
concrete implementations (BPEL).
•
Sharing workflows (Omer Rana, Cardiff
University), incentives, abstract vs. concrete
workflow sharing, annotations and provenance
The comments included a question about how
does provenance help workflow interoperability.
•
Workflow optimisation and sharing (Rizos
Sakellariou, University of Manchester)
optimisation information discovered when
Page 154
•
Shibboleth and security in workflow sharing
approaches (Richard Sinnott, NeSC, University
of Glasgow) using shibboleth attributes in
creating more flexible and dynamic authorisation
policies across Grids and portals for sharing
workflow
One of the comments was a question regarding
whether this approach allowed delegation
mechanisms, with the response that the service
had the optional ability to allow an authorised
user to further delegate.
•
Quality of service guarantees (Dimosthenis
Kyriazis, Telecommunications Laboratory,
National Technical University of Athens), an
approach to mapping abstract workflow and QoS
parameters to concrete federated providers.
The comments included a question about how the
SLA was monitored and the answer was that
there was a separate component used by all
workflow engines.
After the presentations, the meeting content was
summarised and a request for contributions to the
research document made.
GridNet2 Advisory Board
As this was Dr Shields’ first GridNet2 award, he
attended the GNAB2 meeting to observe the workings
of the grant and get a wider appreciation of the sorts
of activities being undertaken under it.
Other Sessions
Dr Shields participated in a number of other OGF
sessions including some of EGEE Workflow Convener
meetings, the EU presentation, and one of the
Astronomical Virtual Observatory meetings.
Summary
Although this was not Dr Shields’ first OGF/GGF
meeting, it was the first funded under GridNet2. As
such, he concentrated on the workflow aspects of the
meeting which met the goals of his original proposal.
The main reason for attending was the Sharing
Workflows session held by the WFM- RG which
proved to be a worthwhile and interesting session.
The approach to workflow sharing among differing
tools and languages rather than attempting to create
a “one size fits all” standardisation effort seemed to
strike a chord with the meeting participants.
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.33 Dr Matthew Shields – Cardiff
Actions
•
Ensure the WFM-RG Web pages are updated
with the meeting summary and presentation
slides.
•
Kick-start the WFM-RG research document on
workflow sharing and solicit contributions before
OGF21 in Seattle
3.33.2
OGF21
WFM-RG – Workflow Sharing and
Interoperability
The WFM-RG session on workflow sharing and
interoperability was the key session Dr Shields
attended as it was the basis of the proposal under
which he received GridNet2 funding, namely to assist
re-starting interest and activity in the research group.
Dr Shields was the first presenter at the session, after
Ian Taylor’s introduction, giving an overview of the
previous session from OGF20 in Manchester and
summarising the activity on developing workflow
sharing and interoperability use cases in the period
between the meetings. As part of his duties as
co-secretary for the group, Dr Shields also took the
meeting minutes and agreed to continue the
organisation of the use case collection document.
The other presentations included:
•
Ewa Deelman (ISI) summarising a recent
NSF/Mellon sponsored workshop entitled A
Workshop on Scientific and Scholarly Workflow
Cyberinfrastructure: Improving
Interoperability, Sustainability and Platform
Convergence in Scientific and Scholarly
Workflow.
The findings of this workshop were of particular
interest to the group since they outlined key
challenges for the workflow community including
fault tolerance, parallelism and long running
workflows, and highlighted the fact that scientists
don’t want a “one-size-fits-all” solution but they
do want to be able to reuse abstract workflow
descriptions across systems, and they do want an
easier way to discover a given workflow tool’s
capabilities to enable the comparison of the
available tools.
•
Andrew Harrison (Cardiff), with his perspective
on workflow embedding, which is the ability to
run workflows from one tool within the workflow
of another.
He focused on the ability to share data and
discussed RESTful approaches to how that might
be achieved;
•
Maurizo Melato (NICE srl) gave an overview of
A-WARE, a Web-based Grid workflow system.
Melato talked about making use of standards
such as BPEL, JBI (ESB), Business Process
Modelling Notation (BPMN), and a workflow lifecycle consisting of design (method user),
grounding (IT user) service binding and data
mapping, deployment (IT user), submission (end
user).
•
After the presenters had finished, the meeting moved
onto a round table discussion, with the group tabling
a research document for workflow sharing and
interoperability use cases. Topics included
interoperability between Triana/Pegasus, the scope
and representation of workflow languages, outreach
to the WFMC standards body, and the need for a
workflow comparison document. After the discussion
the meeting content was summarised and a renewed
request for contributions to the use case research
document was made via the group mailing list.
GridNet2 e-Science Workshop
Dr Shields attended the GridNet2 e-Science
Workshop and presented a summary of the work
being undertaken at Cardiff that GridNet2 funding
has helped. The presentation included a summary of
the key points from the earlier WFM-RG workshops
at both OGF 20 and 21 and outlined Cardiff’s view on
workflow sharing. Key to this was to focus on finding
use cases, and in particular, to focus on sharing data,
making sending and receiving it as simple as possible,
a common theme in Dr Shields’ activities at this OGF.
During the discussions concerning the future of
GridNet, Dr Shields expressed his willingness to
support a new application for funding and
re-confirmed his intent to continue collaborating
with the colleagues he has interacted with as part of
the current funding.
Other Sessions
Dr Shields participated in a number of other OGF
sessions, including some of the Web 2.0 sessions,
myExperiment workshops and OGSA workflow
meetings. The myExperiment workshops were of
particular interest and relevance to him since some of
the current work on Triana is to do with
myExperiment integration, workflow sharing and
interoperability. The OGF meeting was a good
opportunity to hear what the myExperiment
developers had to say, especially in light of other
interested parties in some well-attended sessions.
Summary
This second OGF funded through GridNet2 helped
cement some of the developments made in the area of
workflow sharing from OGF20 and the discussions
on interoperability in this OGF. Dr Shields’ continued
focus at OGF meetings was with workflow subjects in
general and the WFM-RG, in particular, and as such,
the money provided by GridNet2 to enable him to
attend both of these meetings has been invaluable. Dr
Shields was keen to continue with GridNet funding as
he thought it gave a unique opportunity for the UK
e-Science community, especially newer researchers,
to interact with peers nationally, and more
importantly, internationally. He would support any
new GridNet application and had expressed his
commitment to helping any such effort.
Actions
•
Ensure the WFM-RG Web pages are updated
with the meeting summary and presentation
slides.
•
Organise the WFM-RG research document on
workflow sharing and interoperability.
David de Roure (Southampton) gave an overview
of myExperiment and discussed distributed
services, scientists and the “social life of
workflows.”
Page 155
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.34 Prof Richard Sinnott – NeSC
3.34
Prof Richard Sinnott
– NeSC
Prof Richard Sinnott is the Technical Director of the
National e-Science Centre at the University of
Glasgow.
Prof Sinnott’s GridNet2 award also covered the
following people:
•
Oluwafemi Ajayi
For more details, see section 3.1, Mr Oluwafemi
Ajayi – NeSC.
•
Jipu Jiang
For more details, see section3.19, Mr Jipu Jiang
– NeSC.
•
Anthony Stell
For more details, see section 3.36, Mr Anthony
Stell – NeSC.
For summaries of the GridNet2 activities covered by
this award, see the following sections:
•
Section 2.1, Mr Oluwafemi Ajayi – NeSC
•
Section 2.19, Mr Jipu Jiang – NeSC
•
Section 2.34, Prof Richard Sinnott - NeSC
•
Section 2.36, Mr Anthony Stell – NeSC
3.34.1
GGF15
Prof Sinnott attended the following sessions at
GGF15:
•
GGF15 Opening – Mark Linesch
•
e-Science and Cyberinfrastructure – The
Middleware Challenge, Tony Hey, Vice
President, Technical Computing for Microsoft
Corporation
•
OGSA-Authz-WG
•
Community Activity: Leveraging Site
Infrastructure for Multi-Site Grids
•
Business Case for Why Leading IT
Organizations are Adopting Grids
•
Entertainment and Digital Content
•
What is the Software Licensing Model for Grids?
Relevance to NeSC
The security focus of NeSC-Glasgow (including AAA
action line in UK ETF and numerous other projects,
such as BRIDGES, VOTES, DyVOSE, GHI, GEMEPS,
ESP-Grid, GEODE) provided Prof Sinnott’s main
motivation for attending the GGF15 meeting. In
particular, the session on Community Activity:
Leveraging Site Infrastructure for Multi-Site Grids
had numerous highly relevant presentations and was
the primary purpose for Prof Sinnott’s attending the
GGF meeting.
The workshop itself explored how Grid security
technologies could be used for VOs spanning multiple
sites and how existing security infrastructures could
Page 156
be leveraged. A key focus of the workshop was
Shibboleth and advanced authorisation
infrastructures, which was highly relevant to NeSC
Glasgow projects.
Ken Klingenstein gave a presentation on the
Internet2 Shibboleth middleware. The uptake and
widespread acceptance of Shibboleth were described,
along with the wider issues of policy and legal
frameworks. An outline of the challenges that had
been faced in the US in terms of privacy protection
and attribute release via Shibboleth were described.
This was something that had not been touched yet by
the Grid community but might well be something
that becomes more important.
Arnie Miles gave an interesting presentation showing
how they had integrated Condor and Shibboleth at
Georgetown University. This might well be something
Prof Sinnott’s team explore at NeSC Glasgow in their
Shibboleth evaluation and early adoption plans.
Sinnott would like to get one of his supervision
students to look into this in more detail.
Jim Basney gave his MyProxy talk and outlined how
this middleware could be used for unified site
authentication. Prof Sinnott’s team used this software
already in several projects, so recent developments
were well worth monitoring. Prof Sinnott did not
hear anything in this talk that was new to him.
Marty Humphrey gave a talk outlining how his group
had integrated MyProxy with Pubcookie. This was a
fairly complex talk and not really relevant to NeSC
Glasgow’s activities. The idea of Pubcookie and how
they had integrated it with MyProxy did not align
with the way in which Prof Sinnott’s team had been
using PubCookie within the Shibboleth explorations
at NeSC Glasgow.
Von Welch gave his GridShib talk. Prof Sinnott was
already aware of the designs and plans of GridShib
that Von Welch and his team had been following, and
so there were no real surprises. That said, he did
show an initial implementation of this middleware in
action. Prof Sinnott’s team provided an evaluation of
this software as part of their ESP-Grid project with
Oxford University.
David Chadwick gave a presentation and
demonstration of the dynamic delegation of authority
between sites software put together within the
DyVOSE project (led by NeSC Glasgow). This was
well received.
Tom Barton also gave an interesting talk and
demonstration of the Signet and Grouper software for
distributed attribute administration. This looked
highly relevant to NeSC Glasgow activities and
offered similar functionality to the existing PERMIS
software but was purely web based. Prof Sinnott
planned to have a final year undergraduate or
postgraduate student to explore this software, which
was then at beta level.
The panel discussion at the end of this workshop was
quite informative. It was clear that the security folk
were following an aggressive technology push
approach, but needed real live applications to ensure
that this met the needs of the wider Grid community.
This was where NeSC Glasgow fitted in. It was
important that real needs and real standards were
combined, and hence the work on most NeSC
Glasgow projects was exploring latest developments
in this area.
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.34 Prof Richard Sinnott – NeSC
Prof Sinnott noted that he would have liked to attend
the Privacy and Security in Health Grids workshop
also, but this ran in parallel with the security
workshop, which was a clash that should have been
avoided.
The other meetings Prof Sinnott attended were only
indirectly relevant to NeSC Glasgow activities. The
licensing meeting was interesting, but did not come
up with real solutions or concrete proposals for how
licensing issues and Grid technologies could be
integrated. Similarly, there were no concrete ideas or
suggestions for standards in this area.
The entertainment and digital content workshop was
of interest based upon the PGPGrid work. However,
once again, this was not offering anything new; it just
looked at how Grids were being used by major
animation companies for rendering etc. One
interesting discussion did take place on security. Prof
Sinnott had not previously considered splitting the
data and jobs so that compromise of data/jobs on one
site would not result in the movie frames being
accessed and so on, as you need all jobs and data
composed to get the video frames worth stealing.
There might well be scenarios in other NeSC Glasgow
projects where such issues come about, for example,
statistical disclosure in clinical trials.
3.34.2
GGF16
Prof Sinnott attended the following meetings at
GGF16:
•
GGF16 Keynote – Ian Foster
•
Update from UK/Italy - Neil Geddes
•
Semantic Grid 101
•
Grid Education and Training
•
ShibGrid workshop #1 and #2
•
caGrid
•
Security Area Meeting
•
CAOPS
•
Town Meeting
•
LSG-RG
Relevance to NeSC
The security and life science focus of NeSC-Glasgow
(including projects such as VOTES, DyVOSE, GHI,
GEMEPS, ESP-Grid, GEODE, and GLASS) provided
the main motivation for attending the GGF16
meeting. Specifically, the session on ShibGrid and the
life science research group was the primary purpose
for Prof Sinnott’s attending GGF16.
Prof Sinnott gave a presentation at the ShibGrid
meeting demonstrating how they had already
successfully demonstrated the integration of
Shibboleth and Grid technologies at NeSC in
Glasgow. It appeared that they were ahead of the rest
in this regard, who seemed to be still working on
architectural aspects and interaction scenarios to
support Shib and Grid integration (or Grid and Shib
integration). The role of VOs and having multiple
federated attribute repositories was discussed. There
were different possibilities here which needed to be
worked through. The group decided to push forward
on this and to share ideas by establishing an email list
and setting up a test infrastructure for exploring Shib
and Grid integration.
Nate Klingenstein gave an update on SAML 2.0 and
Shibboleth 2.0 and 2.1 developments which would
change some of the underlying technologies, and as
usual, the claim was that this would be for the better.
It was also claimed that these would be backwardcompatible with Shibboleth 1.3, and hence existing
solutions should not be adversely affected. Time
would tell how the landscape and the wider Shib and
Grid efforts would be affected.
David Chadwick gave his PERMIS+Grid+Shib talk on
which there was not much comment. Prof Sinnott’s
team have been exploring many of these things
directly in the DyVOSE project.
Von Welch gave a talk on ShibGrid and what the
Globus folk want to do. This was a repetition of
previous talks and they were still working
back-to-front in that they access the Grid in the usual
way and then use Shib to return attributes, which was
basically wrong in Prof Sinnott’s opinion.
Erik Vullings gave an interesting talk on the
Australian MAMS project which seemed to be the
most advanced of the rest of the groups. They had
implemented attribute release tools which might well
be worth exploring in future. Prof Sinnott suggested
that they might do some joined-up efforts with him
and his group at Macquarie University in Sydney.
The UK GridShib and SHEBANGS projects were
presented, but these had not started yet. Oxford
(GridShib) was looking at starting with a
requirements gathering process, which concerns Prof
Sinnott as it was only a 1 year project. The
SHEBANGS project had concrete ideas for how
things would pan out but their designs seemed
unduly complicated, a fact noted by Nate Klingstein
who identified that there were many points of failure.
That said, they had started with detailed ideas of how
things would pan out where there were multiple
identity providers and attribute authorities, and how
this would work with Grid-based scenarios using
MyProxy.
The Semantic Grid workshop was interesting and
might be of relevance in future. It was extremely well
attended with 100+ folk crammed in. There were a
couple of things that were not 100% clear to Prof
Sinnott on how ontologies and data standards would
actually work. It seemed that one only has to focus on
OWL now as this incorporates DAML+OIL and RDF.
The semantic Grid folk were looking at using
semantic Grid for everything from user descriptions
to resource broking and security infrastructures. It
was worth monitoring in future (and possibly getting
a couple of students to do some explorations with this
stuff for the future).
The caGrid meeting was of relevance to VOTES and
GHI. They were a huge healthcare project in the US
(over $100M and over 500 partners) looking at
cancer-related research and healthcare in general.
They had already been in contact with Prof Sinnott
regarding synergies with VOTES efforts. They
described a very detailed methodology but when
asked, they still did not have any real (patient) data.
It was worth looking at what they have been up to
though to see if Prof Sinnott’s team could learn
anything. They had a security report for healthcare
which was worth looking into. Prof Sinnott was not
sure why they had a full session just for themselves; it
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3 GridNet2 Reports
3.34 Prof Richard Sinnott – NeSC
would have been more useful if Prof Sinnott’s team
had been invited to compare their solutions also.
The security area meeting was a recap on what the
groups had been looking into, plus a presentation
from Microsoft who had plans in this area. They
described the numerous technologies which they
wanted to use to support delegation of authorisation
and enterprise security integration more generally.
This was interesting, but when asked, they did not
comment on how they would or would not be
interoperating with existing GGF efforts. It was clear
that they have plans in the Grid arena and security
was very much part of these plans.
3.34.3
GGF18
Prof Sinnott attended the following sessions at
GGF18:
•
GGF18 Opening (Mark Linesch)
•
Shib+Grid workshop #1 and #2 (Von Welch)
•
Dynamic Negotiation
•
Town Hall
•
Security Area Meeting (Blair Dillaway)
The Grid Education workshop was of relevance due
to the teaching Prof Sinnott’s team already undertake
at NeSC Glasgow. Prof Sinnott was happy with the
idea of sharing information on how best to train and
educate and would ideally like to be more involved in
these activities. He was not sure what they needed to
get from others as there is a successful full course
established at NeSC Glasgow, but was willing to help
others.
•
Business Grids Keynote Panel Discussion
(numerous)
•
Electronics Design Grid Requirements
(numerous)
•
Pharmaceutical Grid Requirements (numerous)
The town meeting was not especially interesting, and
the CAOPS meeting seemed to be looking for a home
for the group within GGF, and the meeting was also
not especially enlightening. However, Prof Sinnott
only caught the latter half of this meeting, due to
discussions with other attendees during the break.
The security and life science focus of NeSC-Glasgow
(including numerous projects such as VOTES,
DyVOSE, GHI, GEMEPS, ESP-Grid, GEODE, GLASS,
and OGC Collision) continued to provide the main
motivation for attending the GGF18 meeting.
Specifically, the session on Shib+Grid was Prof
Sinnott’s primary reason for attending. The
Electronics Design and the Pharmaceutical Grid
requirements meeting were also highly relevant, as
well, with regard to upcoming projects such as
nanoCMOS (for electronics design) and VOTES,
GSSFHS and potentially eCHIRURG, PERISCOPE
for Pharmaceutical Grid requirements.
The LSG-RG meeting was very disappointing for Prof
Sinnott. There was no agenda, the organisers did not
show up, and the dial-in did not work. There were
around 30 people who turned up. Piotr Bala tried his
best to organise the meeting and fill in for missing
organisers, but it was obvious that he had no chance
to really do this well. Lots of security folk attended
this meeting who were probably taken in by the
workshop title, but there were few concrete things
discussed. They were looking for someone to come in
and help drive things forward. Prof Sinnott was likely
to do this upon his return. He proposed the idea of
setting up a real healthcare Grid and life science Grid
development activity, thereby implementing real
Grids for real test purposes. This should form the
basis for concrete evaluations of GGF standards and
technologies, as all research groups should be doing,
instead of being arbitrary talking shops. There were
existing solutions which could form the basis for
these efforts, such as dummy healthcare data sets,
existing repositories, and existing bioinformatics
Grid services and databases and so forth. Sinnott was
convinced that GGF attendees and others would be
interested in doing something if they thought it was
for a real reason. Prof Sinnott had written a couple of
documents, previously, as requested at an earlier
GGF by the group’s organisers. Prof Sinnott sent
these documents to the list but never had any
response/feedback. This had to change or this group
would fade away which would be a shame as it is very
much in Prof Sinnott’s area, and lots of other people
are interested, too.
All-in-all, this was not a particularly fulfilling GGF for
Prof Sinnott although the GridShib session was of
interest. Strong leadership is needed to drive work
forward and make real plans with real milestones for
GGF to be worthwhile.
Page 158
Relevance to NeSC
Prof Sinnott gave a presentation at the Shib+Grid
meeting demonstrating how his team had already
successfully integrated Shibboleth and Grid
technologies at NeSC in Glasgow. This included latest
developments from the DyVOSE project, with
dynamic delegation of trust and dynamic VO
establishment, and attributes being dynamically
assigned potentially to remote users, which can
subsequently be used to make local authorisation
decisions. Prof Sinnott gave a couple of live demos of
this to people throughout the workshop.
There were several interesting talks in the workshop.
It was recognised by the group that there would likely
be a core set of commonly accepted attributes and
some others needed for Grids. This model is aligned
with the work Prof Sinnott’s team have been doing in
this area at Glasgow and with the UK federation
efforts more generally, such as building on the
eduPerson object class.
Nate Klingstein gave an update on Shibboleth 2.0 and
what this would look like under the hood. The NeSC
Glasgow team were applications-oriented end users
whereas this talk was pitched at back-end Shibboleth
developers. Rather worrying was the radical change
from the existing Shibboleth 1.2/1.3 approach,
including complete changes to the Identity Provider,
Service Provider and WAYF, and also to their
protocols/interaction flows and bindings,
encompassing pretty much everything as it was
currently known). Prof Sinnott found these kinds of
things worrying, especially with regard to
formulating a strategy for UK Shibboleth efforts.
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.34 Prof Richard Sinnott – NeSC
David Chadwick gave a very interesting talk on the
latest PERMIS tools. The new policy editing tools, in
particular, had several neat features, like reading in
the different services from a Globus installation, web
services or various others, which can then be fed into
the policy definitions.
•
OGSA-DAI User Forum (Prof Sinnott)
•
VPman (David Chadwick)
Similarly Erik Vullings gave an interesting update on
the Australian MAMS project and took the group
through the various tools the MAMS team had been
building. This talk was given by skype (he was in
Australia). There were numerous problems with
audio throughout the Shib and Grid session
unfortunately!
Relevance to NeSC
The Microsoft security presentation described the
numerous technologies which Microsoft planned to
use to support delegation of authorisation and
enterprise security integration more generally. All
these technologies were Windows-based, of course.
Prof Sinnott was not sure how aligned this was with
OGF standards development.
Prof Sinnott had hoped that the Electronics Design
and Pharmaceutical Grid requirements groups would
have had a bit more to say. The two sessions were
organised as panels and they were at a fairly highlevel. That said, the ideas covered in the Electronics
Design meeting were an almost exact copy of what
Prof Sinnott’s team were planning in their upcoming
nanoCMOS proposal (license management, better job
scheduling, ways to find/index data etc). The
Pharmaceutical Grid meeting was a little generic with
fairly obvious requirements which would apply to any
Grid. Interestingly, Prof Sinnott thought that there
would have been much more emphasis on security
and building of data Grids; however, numerous panel
members seemed to have HPC requirements.
All-in-all, Prof Sinnott found this to be a pretty good
OGF meeting, although he had to leave a day early.
He would have liked to attend the OGSA-DAI User
Group meeting as incumbent chair, but he did
manage to speak to the OGSA-DAI team, however,
and discuss aspects of my upcoming role. He would
also have liked to attend the LSG-RG meeting to
inform others on what NeSC Glasgow were doing in
that space and try to push the efforts of the group
forward. Sinnott felt that this effort was still lacking.
Prof Sinnott was to be chair of the upcoming Life
Science Grid conference in Japan, and the next one
was to be held in Glasgow in 2007. He planned to
push this forward within OGF’s LSG-RG.
3.34.4
OGF20
Prof Sinnott attended the following sessions at
OGF20:
•
OGF20 Keynote (Peter Coveney)
•
BoF - Software Licensing for Grids (David
Wallom/Laura McGinnis)
•
OGF/EGEE Plenary (Ian Bird)
•
Sharing Workflows (Ian Taylor/Ewa Deelman)
•
SAGA Overview (Thielo Kielmann/Andre
Merzky)
•
Unified Grid Logging and Security Auditing
(Martin Swany)
•
GridNet2 meeting (Malcolm Atkinson)
Prof Sinnott also attended various exhibits
throughout OGF20.
Due to other commitments, Prof Sinnott was only
able to attend OGF20 from Tuesday-Thursday. He
would have liked also to attend meetings on Monday
including the OGSA Authorisation meeting and the
LSG-RG, but the timetabling of both of these (9am on
Monday) meant that many would-be attendees
simply could not attend. Prof Sinnott also tried to
organise a workshop on e-Health at OGF20, but this
was not accepted.
At OGF20, Prof Sinnott gave a talk at the Sharing
Workflows session organised by Ian Taylor/Ewa
Deelman. It was clear that security considerations for
both defining and enacting workflows were
something that this community had not yet
satisfactorily addressed. It was also something that
NeSC Glasgow was explicitly focusing on in the
EPSRC pilot project nanoCMOS. Hence, Prof Sinnott
was hopeful that they would be able to push the
agenda of the workflow community, in due course,
with regard to security and authorisation
considerations.
The BoF on Software Licensing for the Grid was also
highly relevant to the nanoCMOS project. Prof
Sinnott was keen that this work should be pursued
further, and he recommended that it should attempt
to provide practical implementations showing how
different license models can be supported on the
Grid. NeSC Glasgow had already implemented one
such scenario in nanoCMOS, integrating remote Grid
services with local FlexLM installations, for example.
Prof Sinnott organised the OGSA-DAI user group
forum and presented his experiences of applying this
technology within projects such as BRIDGES. There
were several presentations given at this workshop by
NeSC Glasgow personnel, covering projects such as
VOTES, SBRN, GEMEPS and nanoCMOS. NeSC
Glasgow planned to explore the upcoming release of
OGSA-DAI since it overlapped considerably with
requirements from their projects.
Prof Sinnott was interested in the SAGA meeting and
was keen to explore this further. The simplifications
offered to Grid developers through SAGA were
compelling.
Given the security focus of NeSC Glasgow, Prof
Sinnott attended the Unified Logging and Auditing
meeting. This was an area where NeSC Glasgow did
not have so much detailed experience and he was
keen to ensure that they learnt from other work in
this area.
Prof Sinnott also attended a VPman project meeting
whilst at OGF20.
All-in-all, Prof Sinnott found this to be a good OGF.
Page 159
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.34 Prof Richard Sinnott – NeSC
3.34.5
OGF21
Prof Sinnott attended the following meetings at
OGF21:
•
Web 2.0 Social Networking for MSI Researchers
•
OGSA-Authz WG Meeting
•
Security Area Meeting
•
DAIS WG
•
OGSA-DAI User Forum
•
Standards All Hands Meeting
•
caGrid
•
OGSA Data Architecture
•
OMII-Europe
•
LSG-RG
•
GridNet2 meeting
•
Grid Interoperability Panel
•
OMII-UK
Prof Sinnott left the OGF meeting on Friday morning.
Relevance to NeSC
All of the meetings Prof Sinnott attended had direct
relevance to projects at NeSC Glasgow, with the
exception of the web 2.0 workshop.
The Web 2.0 workshop was the most well attended of
all of the meetings in which Prof Sinnott participated.
Given that this is very much orthogonal to the Grid
standards effort, Prof Sinnott found this rather
worrying, questioning whether or not these meetings
should be taking place at OGFs or if there should be
an alignment of the mashup-based approaches and
Grid standards instead? It seemed that people were
frustrated at the lack of stable middleware and
standards and were looking elsewhere.
The OGSA-Authz-WG was interesting and often had
heated debates on the work and the progress of the
work as a whole. It was clear that there were
insufficient efforts being contributed to this WG at
the time, especially with regard to the OGF standards
themselves. One of the key issues was that much of
this work was low-level and demanded detailed
knowledge of standards and profile efforts, such as
SAML and XACML, to which few can contribute. One
suggestion was that this group became a Research
Group, a suggestion with which Prof Sinnott agreed,
since NeSC Glasgow was very much a consumer of
the standards and the implementations coming from
the OGS-Authz-WG. The focus should be on showing
how to build secure authorisation-based systems and
not just looking at developing associated standards.
The security area meeting consisted largely of a
presentation from Mike Jones from Microsoft on
their InfoCard work. This is complementary to the
security work at Glasgow using Shibboleth,
LDAP-based attribute authorities and, more recently,
VOMS. It was possible that NeSC Glasgow might
undertake some prototyping with this InfoCard
technology, in the form of a student dissertation, for
example.
Page 160
Prof Sinnott organised the OGSA-DAI user group
forum where several presentations were given from
the high-level OGF data architecture perspective (by
Allan Luniewski of IBM), from the standards such as
DAIS/ByteIO and their implementers at OGSA-DAI
(by Ally Hume of EPCC), and from the perspective of
the end user application developers with their
reported experience in applying OGSA-DAI v3 in the
clinical trials domain (by Anthony Stell, NeSC
Glasgow). This was not the most well attended of
workshops, though, which was a common occurrence
during much of this OGF meeting.
The caGrid presentation was interesting since it
overlapped greatly with the ongoing work in NeSC
projects such as VOTES. Various presentations were
made on caGrid, with the focus especially on the
systems being built and associated security aspects.
The work was well advanced with much done in
terms of ontologies and linking with domain specific
knowledge.
Prof Sinnott noted, however, that in reponse to his
question, this system was not being used in the field
by clinical trials researchers in the cancer domain.
The response was that case studies/trials were
coming in the future. From experiences in VOTES,
Prof Sinnott was acutely aware that any solution in
this domain had to be lightweight from the
perspective of the clinical service provider and the
end user, as they do not want to know about Grid or
Shibboleth and so on. Prof Sinnott did not believe
that this was the case at the time with caGrid, in that
it appeared to be very much a Grid-heavy solution.
The OMII-Europe talks were interesting since they
addressed issues that NeSC Glasgow was facing with
regards to the multitude of different Grid middleware
now existing and their interoperability. Time would
tell how much the interoperability scenarios that
OMII-Europe were exploring and supporting would
be applicable outside of their test infrastructures.
The most interesting workshop at OGF for Prof
Sinnott was the LSG-RG, although he could only
attend the first part of this due to his presentation at
the GridNet2 workshop. The workshop had a single
presentation from Dr John Boyle of the Systems
Biology Institute in Seattle who gave an excellent talk
on why they did not use any Grid middleware at the
time, even though they had tried many of them
(including Globus, caGrid, Taverna, Mobius, and so
on). In short, the fundamental problem Boyle
identified was that this middleware comes from the
top-down perspective, instead of reflecting the
dynamic bottom-up approach needed by the life
science researchers. The science is changing so
rapidly that they need approaches that reflect the
rapidly changing and evolving data, the new
algorithms, and so on, and not an infrastructure per
se. This resonates with NeSC Glasgow’s own
experiences in projects such as BRIDGES and
GEMEPS.
Prof Sinnott gave talks at both the GridNet2 workshop
and at the OMII-UK workshops. The GridNet2 talk
was focused upon what he had done at GGF/OGF and
his ideas for how to take this forward, for example,
with GridNet3. For Prof Sinnott, a key aspect was the
identification of OGF champions who could provide
the transfer of knowledge from WG/RG groups to the
wider UK community. There were enclaves of
expertise in OGF which did not transfer outside of the
groups, for example, people working in security
didn’t know much about what was happening in
workflow or data working groups, and so on.
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.34 Prof Richard Sinnott – NeSC
The Grid Interoperability panel was interesting since
pretty much all the middleware providers, from gLite,
Globus, SRB/iRODS and CROWN through to
OMII-Europe, sat on the panel. The topics discussed
were broad, and in Prof Sinnott’s opinion, worrying.
As a single example, the OGSA-BES specifications
were highlighted as being deficient in several ways,
including issues with data staging. Prof Sinnott was
not sure why these issues were not identified at the
outset and incorporated in to the specification
without future extensions or profiles and so on. There
were similar issues with other areas, such as security
and information services, discussed at the session.
At the OMII-UK workshop, Prof Sinnott gave a talk
on the use of this middleware in the nanoCMOS
project. This was well received as far as he could tell,
and several people had requested his slides since
then.
All-in-all, Prof Sinnott found this to be a pretty good
OGF. Prof Sinnott noted that this was not the best
attended OGF he has been to, and wondered why his
proposal to host the International Conference on Life
Science Grids 2007 at this OGF meeting had not been
accepted.
3.34.6
OGF22
Prof Sinnott attended the following sessions at
OGF22:
•
Opening Session
•
OGSA-RUS specification
•
OGSA Authz
•
Security Area Meeting
•
Authz interoperation demos
•
OGC-OGF Collaboration (three sessions)
•
Encyclopaedia of Life
•
Financial services workshop
•
Keynote on Cloud Computing
•
Pharma, Biotech and Life Sciences workshop
(two sessions)
•
Town Hall meeting
•
Grid Usage and Productivity
•
Data Management workshop (two sessions)
Prof Sinnott left OGF22 on the Thursday afternoon.
Relevance to NeSC
All the meetings Prof Sinnott attended had direct
relevance to projects at NeSC Glasgow.
The OGSA-RUS workshop was useful in that it gave
Prof Sinnott an overview of the various specifications
and approaches ongoing in this area, which was
especially relevant given the full economic costing
and need for accounting on Glasgow resources such
as ScotGrid. At the start of the meeting, the chair
(Morris Riedel) actually took the time to go around
the room to find out the background of attendees on
the RUS specs and made sure that he covered the
background information needed to bring people up to
speed. Prof Sinnott thought that this should be part
of many, if not all, working group meetings
The OGSA Authz WG was split into two meetings.
The first of these covered the discussions on the
recent standards that had been put together. The
VPman project, in which NeSC was directly involved,
had included work on the implementation and
exploitation of these standards. Prof Sinnott gave a
presentation and demonstration of one of these
standards, focusing on use of VOMS attributes being
pushed to services for authorisation decisions to be
made on access for using Grid services protected by
PERMIS. This was made in the context of the VOTES
project.
The pull model specification was to be explored
within the nanoCMOS project; hence, the
authorisation specifications mapped directly onto the
requirements and scenarios in NeSC projects.
On Tuesday, Prof Sinnott attended all three
OGC-OGF workshops. This was a fact-finding effort
in understanding what was happening in the
geospatial and geospatial standards space.
Furthermore, through the NeSC involvement in the
SeeGEO project and the recently ESRC-funded
DAMES NCeSS node in which NeSC was directly
involved, knowing more about how to access and use
geospatial data in social science and epidemiological
studies was very much aligned with future NeSC
work.
Based on this meeting, initial ideas on collaboration
were being pursued with some of the attendees.
On Wednesday, Prof Sinnott attended the
Encyclopaedia of Life presentation which covered an
interesting area. Prof Sinnott also attended the
workshop on financial services, an area he was not
directly involved in but was interested in. He was
hoping that the security technologies and scenarios
on which NeSC Glasgow had been working might find
a niche in this area, but the talks were concerned
more with HPC and performance.
Prof Sinnott attended the keynote on cloud
computing. It was not clear to him how the ideas of
ensembles, as presented, differed from the vision of
virtual organisations in their currently supported
state. That said, Prof Sinnott had a PhD student
looking into configuration management and Grid
technologies and considered that there might be
some mileage in pursuing some investigation into
this latest OGF buzz.
Prof Sinnott attended the pharma workshop since it
mapped directly onto numerous projects at NeSC.
The panel session at the end was especially
interesting. Prof Sinnott still felt that the Grid
community had not yet grasped how the standards
and technologies, and their deployment applied in
live clinical settings.
On Thursday, Prof Sinnott attended the Grid Usage
and Productivity in HPC session, which was
essentially a talk about Tabor Research and Grid
marketing. He also attended the data management
workshop and listened to talks about commercially
oriented data management, including, for example,
the day-to-day reality of managing the eBay
infrastructures. It was interesting, but he was not
sure how relevant these large-scale, industrial
infrastructures were to the day-to-day activities of
academic Grid-related research.
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3.35 Mr David Spence – STFC
All-in-all, Prof Sinnott enjoyed this OGF. As with the
Seattle meeting, this was not the best attended OGF
but this was discussed at length at the Town Meeting,
both in terms of the financial situation of OGF and
the need to avoid clashes with conferences. For
example, the next OGF in Barcelona clashes with
OGC meetings in Germany and with the HealthGrid
conference in Chicago. However, it is co-located with
the BEinGrid conference. Selecting dates that avoid
clashes is a non-trivial matter given the scope of OGF
and the groups and research domains it covers.
3.35
Mr David Spence –
STFC
The third session was taken up by a talk describing
the result of the recent discussions in the Shibboleth
developer community over the features and
implementation methods for Shibboleth 2.0. This
talk was given by Nate Klingenstein (a Shibboleth
developer) and gave the Grid community a chance to
see how future developments in Shibboleth would
affect their work and have their questions answered.
The fourth session looked at some current issues that
have an effect on all Shibboleth-Grid integration
projects.
•
Mr David Spence is involved in Grid Deployment at
the STFC’s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.
In particular, he described in detail how
Shibboleth can be used with VOMRS/VOMS and
the opportunities for even deeper integration.
For a summary of Mr Spence’s GridNet2 activities, see
section 2.35, Mr David Spence – STFC.
3.35.1
GGF18
•
Christoph Witzig presented discussions that he
had had with the IGTF and PMAs about
accreditation of Shibboleth-based CAs.
•
Tom Scavo presented some of the new OASIS
standards which had been submitted as part of
the GridShib project, especially in the area of
X.509 and SAML bindings.
Shibboleth for Grids
The Shibboleth for Grids workshop comprised four
sessions. The first two of the sessions comprised of
reports on the progress of Shibboleth and Grid
integration projects which were presented at GGF16:
•
Erik Vullings presented the continuing
Shibboleth work at MAMS in Australia and in
particular their IAM suite.
IAM was a generalised collaboration platform
allowing VO users to gain access via Shibboleth to
their VO’s resources, including Grid resources in
a non-VO specific way.
•
Christoph Witzig presented the work of the
SWITCH project that was part of the EGEE-II
project to enable Shibboleth-based
authentication to EGEE resources.
•
Von Welch presented an update on GridShib.
Their recent work included providing means to
place SAML assertions into X.509 certificates
(including OASIS standards) and integration with
myVocs.
•
Mr Spence presented the progress with the
ShibGrid project.
Mr Spence covered the project’s user
requirements feedback and the architecture
developed.
•
Richard Sinnott presented various projects from
NeSC Glasgow, including the DyVOSE project
which was providing a dynamic privilege
management infrastructure.
•
Mike Jones presented progress with the
SHEBANGS and ShibVomGSite projects, along
with questions about levels of assurance and
standards for mappings between Shibboleth
attributes and identities and X.509 DN identities
and VOMS attributes.
•
David Chadwick presented GridShibPERMIS as a
PDP for GT4 and the web, and recent
developments in ease-of-use through a policy
editor and a simplified version of PERMIS.
Page 162
Alan Sill looked at issues with Shibboleth
integration for registration systems, which was
an important issue, especially in systems with
automatically-generated X.509 identities for
users.
These sessions proved informative about the
direction that different projects are working towards
and the future of Shibboleth itself and its effect on
Grid work in particular. The session showed that
while many people have arrived at the same core
solution for converting Shibboleth authentication
assertions to GSI credentials (that is, through the use
of an online CA of some description), there was not
much consensus in areas such as registration, levelof-assurance and identity and attribute mapping.
Due to time constraints, the discussion about an
interoperability test-bed and points for
interoperability were dropped; these would have been
a great starting point for resolving these issues.
Towards Worldwide Grid User
Support
This session looked at the area of providing
consistent user support in Grids that span the whole
globe, where users might be in a different VO,
continent and Grid to the resources they were
employing. This was driven by the co-operation
between EGEE and the Open Science Grid (OSG),
which were interoperating to provide resources for
the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG). Both
Torsten Antoni from the GGUS support helpdesk in
EGEE and Rob Quick from the OSG Grid Operations
Centre presented their individual solutions to
large-scale user support and how the two systems
were currently interoperating. In both cases, they
had developed similar federated approaches
consisting of VO-, resource-, geographically- or
function-local support units with a central system for
routing non-local queries.
This was a useful session looking at a non-technical
issue which was having an increasing effect on Grids
with growing numbers of users and resources.
Although these two systems were currently
interoperating, there seemed to be an outstanding
need to develop standard practices (and protocols) to
support increasing user levels.
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.36 Mr Anthony Stell – NeSC
Security Talks
Blair Dillaway from Microsoft described the
company’s unified approach to trust, delegation and
authorisation. This security policy assertion language
(SecPAL) combines best features from other similar
authorisation schemes to provide this XML-based
declarative, logic-based, security language. Jeff Tan
from Monash University talked about work done to
circumvent institution’s firewalls to enable Grid
access. For this he used a combination of SOCKS and
SSH.
3.36
Mr Anthony Stell –
NeSC
Mr Anthony Stell is a Grid engineer at NeSC Glasgow.
Mr Anthony Stell was funded by Prof Richard
Sinnott’s GridNet2 award.
For a summary of Mr Stell’s GridNet2 activities, see
section 2.36, Mr Anthony Stell – NeSC.
3.36.1
GGF16
OGSA-Authz-WG meeting
OGSA-Authz-WG
In this working group session a new charter for OGSA
Authz was agreed, extra features were suggested for
the Credential Validation Services (CVS)
requirements document, and some comments were
made on the PERMIS and VOMS profiles.
Mr Stell’s work in Grid research was primarily
focused on security. Authorisation standards and
specifications had a large impact on the technology
that he used in the NeSC projects with which he was
involved.
IGTF Issues
Grid Education and Training
Workshop
This session started with the introduction of the new
IGTF logo and was followed by reports from the three
PMAs. The draft Member Integrated Credential
Services (MICS) profile, which leverages a site’s high
quality accounts database, was discussed, along with
changes to the Classic CA profile. This part of the
session led to a discussion of the relative roles of the
IGTF and PMAs.
In the second part of this session, Peter Alterman
gave a presentation on the Federal (US Government)
PKI Architecture. This talk especially focused on PKI
trust bridges which allow trust to be bridged between
different trust providers. This talk proved useful in
thinking about the future of Grid trust.
FI-RG
In this session Melinda Shore from Cisco, who is also
chair of the MIDCOM-WG at IETF, presented the
various solutions to firewall issues to kick off the next
stage of work in the FI-RG. The next stage was the
the evaluation of the IETF solutions to these
problems and the creation of a solutions document.
In addition, other solutions and the subsequent
discussion were presented and led by Ralph
Niederberger, Thijs Metsch and Jeff Tan. This
included ideas about how to enable firewalls for Grid
usage.
Topics in Identity Management
The Topics in Identity Management session
consisted of three talks: the first was by Von Welch
who gave an overview of GridShib, and the second
and third were given by Stephen Langella (Ohio State
University) and described Dorian and the Grid Trust
Service (GTS) respectively. These were components
which provided authentication, authorisation, trust
management and secure communications services to
medical collaborations. The Dorian system provided
the Grid user account management function and GTS
provided secure inter-institutional trust. These talks
were useful case-studies in different methods for
providing easy-to-use secure access to Grid resources
for non-Grid users.
Part of Mr Stell’s remit at NeSC in Glasgow was to
assist in the teaching of the Advanced MSc Grid
Computing module. As such, his attendance at this
session aided the discovery of other methods of
teaching Grid and discussion of the issues raised in
this field.
Shib and Grid Investigators Meeting
The security work that formed the mainstay of Mr
Stell’s research work largely involved Shibboleth and
other technologies that interface with it. Attendance
at this session gave him an overview of other projects
that were investigating Shibboleth at the time and
how these related to the projects in the same area
that were being conducted at Glasgow.
GT4 Status and Experiences
Mr Stell was using GT4 as part of the development of
the VOTES project and had previously been involved
in the alpha-testing stage of GT4. Mr Stell attended
this session to gain an overview of how v4 of the
toolkit had since progressed and to discuss whether
new features have appeared that might help with
current development efforts.
OGSA-DAI Technology Update
As with GT4, Mr Stell was using OGSA-DAI in his
current project and an update in the status of the
technology was useful for knowledge of its
implementation in the VOTES project.
Security and Privacy Needs of Health
Grids
This meeting had a direct effect on work in Mr Stell’s
current project as this was exactly the application
domain that is covered by VOTES, with a focus on the
security aspects that are prevalent in the life sciences.
Grid Authorization Interoperability
Workshop
The issues that were appearing in the establishment
of a Grid authorisation infrastructure also had a
direct effect on previous security work and the issues
that were prevalent in the VOTES project.
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3 GridNet2 Reports
3.37 Dr Ian Taylor – Cardiff
3.37
Dr Ian Taylor –
Cardiff
Dr Ian Taylor is a senior lecturer at the School of
Computer Science, Cardiff University.
For a summary of Dr Taylor’s GridNet2 activities, see
section 2.37, Dr Ian Taylor – Cardiff.
3.37.1
GGF18
Dr Taylor participated in the following sessions at
GGF18:
•
Co-organised, chaired and gave introductory
comments at the Appliance Aggregation Research
Group (APPAGG-RG) where the theme was the
integration of static and mobile Grids.
•
Attended a number of other sessions and
keynotes, including the SAGA working group
sessions, the EU funding round table, the
OGSA-WG and the LSG-RG, amongst others.
APPAGG-RG
The APPAGG-RG session was called Aggregating
Mobile Devices with Grids. It attempted to focus on
the co-existence of static Grids and mobile Grids by
extracting use cases in that area. Dr Taylor coorganised the session, with Vladimir Getov. The
agenda was as follows:
•
Co-organiser and Speaker of the Sharing
Workflows session (WFM-RG)
•
Participant: OGSA Workflow
•
Participant: e-Arts and e-Humanities e-Science:
Technologies and Methodologies in Arts and
Humanities Research (two sessions)
•
Participant: SOKU Workshop
Sharing Workflows Session
Dr Taylor chaired and co-organised the Sharing
Workflows session with the group’s co-chair, Ewa
Deelman. The session focused on the need for sharing
workflows for scientific applications, rather than
focusing on standardisation of workflow
representations, which other groups, such as the
OGSA Workflow group, are looking at. The session
had a number of speakers with a range of topics
within the workflow-sharing paradigm. The agenda
was as follows:
•
Dr Ian Taylor: Introduction and Motivation
•
Adrian Toth, University of Miskolc: Levels of the
Grid Workflow Interoperability
•
Omer Rana, Cardiff University: Workflow
Optimization and Sharing Using Performance
Information
•
Rizos Sakellariou, University of Manchester:
Scheduling Data Intensive Workflows onto
Storage-Constrained Distributed Resources
•
David De Roure, University of Southampton and
OMII-UK: myExperiment - Social Software for
Workflow Sharing
•
Andrew Harrison, Cardiff University: The WHIP
Plug-in for Workflow and Artefact Sharing
•
Richard Sinnott, National e-Science Centre,
Glasgow: Shibboleth Protection and
Management of Workflows
•
Dimosthenis Kyriazis, Telecommunications
Laboratory, National Technical University of
Athens: A Workflow Mapping Mechanism for
establishing Quality of Service Guarantees
•
Discussion on the Focus Research Document on
Application Scenarios for OGF-21
1. Dr Ian Taylor (Cardiff University) , Session
Introduction
2. Vladimir Getov (University of Westminster, UK),
Time-Critical Use Cases in Mobile Grids
3. Brian Adamson (Naval Research Lab (NRL),
Code 5522: Composite Computing and Mobile
Ad-hoc Networks
4. Ian Wang (Cardiff University), P2PS: P2P for
ad-hoc Networks and Simulation
5. Adina Riposan (Contact Net, Romania), Mobile
Devices and eHealth Paramedical and Imaging
Scenarios
6. Omer Rana (Cardiff University, UK),
Healthcare@Home: Integrating Healthcare
Sensors with Grid-based Data Analysis
The attendance was around 20 people so some
interest was shown within the community, but Dr
Taylor felt that it was not enough to drive this theme
into the following OGFs. Dr Taylor could not attend
OGF21 because he was teaching at Cardiff—the OGF
was held on the open week of the semester—and so
the momentum for the APPAGG-RG dwindled. A few
months before the OGF in Manchester, Ewa Deelman
suggested that Dr Taylor became the co-chair of the
WFM-RG instead, which was timely because Dr
Taylor had just edited a special Journal of Grid
Computing Journal on Workflow, had been lead
editor on Springer’s Workflows for e-Science and had
a number of talks with other workflow groups. The
WFM-RG therefore became Dr Taylor’s focus for
OGF20 and onwards.
3.37.2
OGF20
Dr Taylor participated in the following sessions at
OGF20:
Page 164
The session was a success with a number of
discussions developing from the various
presentations. The speakers and participants were
enthusiastic about being involved in the creation of
an OGF research document on the subject of
gathering use cases for sharing workflows. This
would be initiated with progress made in time for
OGF21, where the RG would discuss the use cases
and take the subject further.
OGSA Workflow
As co-chair of the WFM-RG, Dr Taylor attended this
session to observe current work in the workflow
arena for OGSA. The general theme of the group was
to gather current use cases and discuss possible
standardisation of workflow for OGSA. There were a
number of discussions about BPEL4WS and its
suitability for OGSA.
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.37 Dr Ian Taylor – Cardiff
There were also discussions about the Workflow
Management Coalition (WFMC), a global
organisation of adopters, developers, consultants,
analysts, as well as university and research groups
engaged in workflow and Business Process
Management Software. The discussions ended up in
favour of BPEL to some extent, but both the
discussions and use case gathering were at a very
early stage. Dr Taylor planned to monitor this group
over the coming OGFs to see where they would go
with this and whether there would be adoption of a
specific workflow language for Grid computing. Most
current workflow systems had not adopted such an
approach so it would be interesting for Dr Taylor to
see how the field evolves over the coming years.
such interoperability and if so, how to achieve this.
The agenda was as follows:
•
Dr Ian Taylor – Session Overview
•
Matthew Shields – Sharing Workflows Recap of
OGF20
•
Volunteers for the research document – Use
Cases for Workflow Sharing
•
Ewa Deelman – NSF Workflow Interoperability
workshop and what transpired in the execution
breakout
•
Andrew Harrison – Kepler/Triana Integration Interoperability Use Case 1
•
Maurizio Melato – Web-Based Grid Workflow
System: A-WARE Project
•
David De Roure – myExperiment
•
All – Future plans (Use case document)
e-Arts and e-Humanities
This workshop was a BoF split into two sessions, with
presentations from the work of TextGrid in Germany,
the Arts and Humanities e-Science Initiative in the
UK (David De Roure) and presentations from related
projects in the US – Steve Beck was amongst the
speakers. The second session involved more
discussions about possible routes to standardisation
in e-Arts and e-Humanities. One of the presentations
(Steve Beck’s) included some slides on the work being
done in Cardiff in this area, specifically on the DART
mini-PIPSS PPARC project, which was looking at
using P2P and workflow technologies for distributed
music information retrieval.
SOKU Session
An underlying theme in a number of OGF sessions
was the increasing focus on Web 2.0 and social
network-based technologies to support collaboration
between application users. Web 2.0 technologies
(such as the AJAX, JSON, etc) and mash-ups were a
hot topic in the SOKU session also. The session
included presentations from a number of speakers
including David De Roure and Pinar Alper from the
UK. Dr Taylor attended the session out of interest
and to understand the different perspectives on
SOKU. It was interesting to see the vision from the
different speakers.
3.37.3
OGF21
Dr Taylor participated in the following sessions at
OGF21:
•
Co-organised, chaired and gave introductory
comments at the Workflow Management
Research Group (WFM-RG) session.
•
Co-organiser and participant of the GridNet2
e-Science Workshop (three sessions).
•
Attended a number of other sessions and
keynotes, including Think Little: The
Proliferation of Small Clusters Means Big
Changes, Web 2.0 Meets Grids panel, e-Social
Science: ourSpaces amongst others.
•
Held a number of follow-up meetings for the
WFM-RG Session.
Dr Taylor chaired and co-organised the WFM-RG
session with the group’s co-chair, Ewa Deelman. The
title of the session was Workflow Sharing and
Interoperability and focused on extracting some user
requirements from existing systems for being able to
interoperate between current workflow
environments. The group discussed and tried to
answer questions such as whether there was a call for
The session was timely, appearing just after a
Workshop on Scientific and Scholarly Workflow
Cyberinfrastructure: Improving Interoperability,
Sustainability and Platform Convergence in
Scientific and Scholarly Workflow 11. The session
carried on with the themes from this workshop
(which both Deelman and Dr Taylor attended and
gave presentations at) in order to get feedback from
the OGF community in the usefulness of such
interoperability. The results were promising. The
session was a success with around 40 participants
and several people made comments at the closing
discussion about their experiences and noted that
they would be willing to provide use cases.
This work was complementary to other effort in this
field. A networking proposal W4eSNet: Workflows
for e-Science Network was to be submitted to the
e-Science networking call with many participants
from this session and the field in general. The
WFM-RG were hoping to build up momentum in
OGF22 on this theme by gathering use cases and
presenting these at the next OGF. When the use cases
were complete, the group might choose to propose to
spin off a working group in order to create
standardised interfaces for interoperability between
workflow systems.
3.37.4
OGF22
Dr Taylor participated in the following sessions at
OGF22:
•
Co-organised, chaired and gave introductory
comments at the Workflow Management
Research Group (WFM-RG) session.
•
Attended a number of other sessions and
keynotes.
•
Held a number of follow-up meetings for the
WFM-RG Session including interactions with
other groups, for example, OGSA-Workflow.
This report focuses on the ongoing activities within
the WFM-RG by providing an overview of the session
11
Supported by NSF and the Mellon Foundation.
October 4-5, 2007
Page 165
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.38 Mr Elias Theocharopoulos - NeSC
and the current direction of the RG and how this will
lead to standards activities over the next year.
Dr Taylor chaired and organised the WFM-RG
session.
3.38.1
OGF22
Mr Theocharopoulos attended the following meetings
at OGF22:
•
Opening Session
•
SAGA Java Language Binding
•
OGSA-Authz-WG
•
WFM-RG
•
OGSA-Data Architecture Future Directions
•
OGC-OGF Collaboration Workshop
•
Infrastructure Management – eBay
•
SAGA, the Simple API for Grid Applications
•
SAGA + DAIS: Next Steps
•
The Encyclopedia of Life: A Web page for Every
Species
The WFM-RG session was very well attended with 34
registered participants. The discussion and
presentations focused on three levels for
interoperability and tried to get people to comment
on these. The approaches discussed were:
•
Porting Applications with Globus Gridway
•
Data Management Workshop
•
Workflow embedding – allowing workflows to
run within their own environment, but invoked
from another.
•
Development of a meta language – allowing
different proprietary languages to be mapped to a
single standard one.
•
Semantic annotation/description/classification –
this is particularly important for sharing.
Mr Theocharopoulos’ principal role at OGF22 was to
present his work on an implementation of WS-DAI
and, more precisely, of DAIX using OGSA-DAI.
Therefore, he participated in the DAIS-WG session by
giving a presentation about the implementation
status and issues raised. Providing the status of this
effort was important for the next steps of the
DAIS-WG and was highly appreciated by the authors
of this specification, highlighting possible errata. As a
result of Mr Theocharopoulos’ contributions, there
were discussions planned in order to get certain parts
of the WSDAI/DAIX documents clarified.
In preparation for the session, Andrew Harrison and
Dr Taylor had written a questionnaire, for which Mr
Harrison created an on-line submission form
(http://bender.astro.cf.ac.uk/wfmrg), to gather
opinions, experiences and requirements from users,
designers and developers of workflow systems
regarding interoperability and sharing. The
questionnaire was sent to a number of external
mailing lists, and also to internal ones, such as the
WFM-RG and OGSA-WG. Dr Taylor and Mr Harrison
received 14 responses before the session. The session
looked at sharing and workflow interoperability and
led on to a discussion of the survey results, in an
attempt to get volunteers for contributing towards a
research document.
Dr Taylor gave the introduction and session
overview, including background to the research and
past efforts in interoperability.
The discussion proved very successful and seven
people volunteered to help with the new research
document. Work on the document began and, since
the session, another two people volunteered to help.
Dr Taylor hoped that this research document would
bring together previous efforts on workflow
interoperability (for example, from the WFMC) and
create a taxonomy for future discussions on
interoperability. Depending on the success of the
document and the feedback from the community in
future OGF sessions, this work could lead to a
working group being established in order to help
provide standardisation for workflow interoperability
in general.
The aims of the WFM-RG session were fully met and
the group was very happy with the result and
enthusiasm from the community in taking this work
forward.
3.38
Mr Elias
Theocharopoulos NeSC
Mr Elias Theocharopoulos is the DAIT Software
Engineer at the National e-Science Centre in
Edinburgh. Mr Elias Theocharopoulos was funded by
Dr Steven Newhouse’s GridNet2 award.
For a summary of Mr Theocharopoulos’ GridNet2
activities, see section 2.38, Mr Elias
Theocharopoulos – NeSC.
Page 166
DAIS-WG
The main points to be discussed were as follows:
•
Consider JDBC constraints in order to get full or
intermediate tuples back, as well as getting
number of rows back.
•
Consider clarifying errors in DAIX in a more
precise way, that is, give more information to the
client.
•
Consider re-phrasing parts that sounded
ambiguous to the implementers.
The benefits of Mr Theocharopoulos’ attendance at
the event included meeting with the authors of the
WS-DAI specification and others from the
DAIS-WG—Isao Kojima and Said Mirza from AIST,
Japan, and Oscar Corcho and Miguel Esteban from
UPM, Spain—who are working on new realisations
for RDF to exchange ideas and experiences of
implementing the WS-DAI family of standards.
Theocharopoulos planned to continue to be involved
in the ongoing discussion to resolve issues and
inconsistencies raised by his implementation.
Mr Theocharopoulos discussed the following issues
with Miguel Esteban:
1. Investigating whether his DAIX implementation
could support some advanced XQueries
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.39 Dr David Wallom – OeRC
2. Esteban’s concerns about the response of the
factory operations, and more precisely, the fact
that they seemed to be inconsistent with the core
specification
•
Requirement: Embed existing workflow that run
in a different environment
•
Challenge: Define workflows in an abstract way.
Mr Theocharopoulos spoke to Mike Jones from
Manchester about his work on the SARoNGS project,
which is, effectively, a gateway to use Shibboleth
authentication in order to grant authentication from
NGS.
•
Benefit: Re-use
•
How to achieve it:
OGC-OGF Collision Workshop
Mr Theocharopoulos attended most of the OGC-OGF
Collision workshop. The aim of the workshop is to
bring the OGC and OGF communities together. This
involves:
•
Define workflow at abstract level
•
Allow workflow engines to be sub-forked as a
sub-process.
Some interesting questions raised were:
•
Whether to embed locally or in a distributed
sense.
•
Enriching OGC's WPS with distributed Grid
mechanisms
•
•
Providing workflow functionality in order to get
the data from WPS and the relevant services
(WMS, WFS, WCS)
Native engine enactment of shared workflows
(embedding) or shared abstract (meta)
description.
•
There had not been any major progress towards
this but it seemed that BPEL was the most
accessible approach on first instance.
How to approach abstract meta-language,
semantics: either global solution, or small things
on a project-to-project mapping basis.
•
Is it worth attempting a classification of workflow
requirements?
•
How to deal with the increasing complexity due
to the changes of the technology to update the
versions of workflow engines.
There was also some discussion about adopting
SAGA as an API to build geo-spatial applications.
There was a need for some level of authentication
especially when demographic data was involved,
because of its sensitive nature. The consensus was
that an external authentication mechanism/service
should take care of the authentication, for example,
Shibboleth. There was a talk from Muenster on the
WPS-G(rid) implementation, which was based on
North 52 project. In this case, they used WAS (Web
Authentication Service) for user authentication, by
checking the SAML credential, and WSS (Web
Security Service) as a layer to prevent access to the
Web Service. They also emphasised that they cared
mostly about getting their work done efficiently
rather than focusing on standards.
Mr Theocharopoulos’ general impression was that
there were a number of interesting efforts in the area
of GeoSpatial services for both workflow and security
directions. It seemed, though, that bringing them
under the umbrella of a common standard might not
be a straightforward process.
WFM-RG
Mr Theocharopulos attended the WFM-RG out of
personal interest. The topic discussed was how
different workflows that apply in Grid environments
could possibly be unified, or how one workflow could
use another in an efficient and interoperable way.
The different types of interoperability were
mentioned at the beginning. These were as follows:
•
Direct
•
Message passing
•
Bridging
•
Use of shared data stores
Then the challenge of interoperability between
workflows was presented, which can be summarised
by the following points:
The OGSA-DAI/Taverna endeavour in OMII-UK may
be worth contributing as an example of
interoperability to this group. Theocharopoulos has
passed on the contact details of the people who
implemented this work to the group chairs.
From a personal point of view, Mr Theocharopoulos
improved his presentation skills and was exposed to
work in other groups, in particular the workflow
management and SAGA groups which would be of
use to his future work.
3.39
Dr David Wallom –
OeRC
Dr David Wallom is Technical Manager of the Oxford
e-Research Centre.
For a summary of Dr Wallom’s GridNet2 activities,
see section 2.39, Dr David Wallom – Oxford.
3.39.1
GGF18
Dr Wallom attended the following sessions at GGF18:
•
GGF Opening, Mark Linesch
•
Keynote: Vision for 21st Century Discovery, Dr
Dan Atkins, NSF
•
GIN Update
•
Topics in Grid Management Workshop (Chaired)
•
PGS-RG Workshop Followup and Planning
(Chaired)
•
UR-WG Document discussions
•
OGSA HPC Profile discussion
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3.39 Dr David Wallom – OeRC
•
Daonity: Trusted Computing Enhanced GSI
Workshop
•
Chairs Update
•
Storage Grids in Healthcare Workshop
GIN Update
The GIN group gave an update on their current
status. The Authentication and Data groups were well
along the path with targets being met. The
Information group gave a presentation a graphical
tool that presented GLUE information.
•
•
PGS-RG
The PGS group made several recommendations on
for what they would do over the next 2-3 meetings.
This included a wrapup of the workshop that the
group had held previously.
UR-WG Document Discussion
This session gave an update on the changes that were
received through the period of public comment and
that had been acted upon since GGF17.
OGSA-HPC Basic Profile
Software Licensing for Grids BoF
Dr Wallom was co-organiser for this session.
•
Grids Mean Business: Software Licensing - A
Way Forward?
•
UR -WG
•
The Astronomical Virtual Observatory Building Operational Services on Pervasive
Grids: Standards in Use
•
Data Management Area
•
Experience with Application Domains, Massimo
Lamanna (CERN)
Topics in Grid Management
This workshop bought together all the managers of
different production Grid infrastructures so that they
could describe the best practice examples that could
be used in the new and upcoming Grid
infrastrucutures. This workshop attracted a large
number of attendees and was considered a great
success.
The Grid as a Complex System: Faster,
Bigger, Better Science on Global Grid
Infrastructure, Peter Coveney
2nd International Workshop on
Campus and Community Grids
This workshop was massively attended, with the
conveners having to turn people away from the room
as people were already sitting in the aisles.
The aim of the workshop was to illustrate that for
each of the topics that were discussed within the
breakout sessions, a Grid of any size, be it
organisational or international actually faces the
same problems. From this, the group aimed to give a
lead to the further topics that should be touched on
by GIN as it moved from a technical exercise to a
usable long term infrastructure. The output from this
workshop was a published OGF informational
document.
At this meeting, there was an update on the status of
the HPC-BP work, which included the number of
groups that were going to implement HPC-BP when
it was finalised. These groups included Platform, MS
and possibly some of the open source solutions.
The workshop closed with a panel discussion and
round-up of the breakout sessions.
Daonity: Trusted Computing
Enhanced GSI (Workshop)
•
OxGrid and the UK NGS
•
GLOW and US Open Science Grid, Wisconsin
•
White Rose Grid
•
Crimson Grid, Harvard
•
Cardiff Campus Grid
The Daonity product from HP (China) is a trusted
computing implementation. This session gave an
overview on what had been done so far.
Storage Grids in Healthcare
(Workshop)
This session was a requirements gathering effort. Dr
Wallom gave a description of the eDiamond and
future GIMI infrastructures.
3.39.2
OGF20
Dr Wallom attended the following sessions at
OGF20:
•
2nd International Workshop on Campus and
Community Grids
This continued the interoperability theme and
was an all-day session.
•
Keynotes:
•
The Social Grid, Tony Hey
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Campus Grid Case Studies: Connecting
Local Services to a Wider Context
Community Grid Case Studies: Connecting
Local Services to a Wider Context
•
eMinerals
•
NEESGrid (or UK NEESGrid)
•
Data Grids:
•
ORION
•
BIRN
•
European Data Grids
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.39 Dr David Wallom – OeRC
National General Infrastructures:
Federating Smaller Grids
This session looked at specific mechanisms for
engaging infrastructures with different software
stacks.
•
DGrid
•
EGEE
•
Naregi
•
NGS-UK
•
OSG
•
TeraGrid
Breakout Sessions
•
User management, passing identities and
accounting
•
Support models, both systems and users
•
Software Licensing within cross organisational
systems
The results of this session were used to lead into
the discussion in the Grids Mean Business
session later in the week.
•
Data in Grids
The key topics included authenticity and
integrity, access controls, and technology
evolution management.
The Social Grid
Tony Hey spoke about the importance of knowledge
management and used many examples of
institutional repositories etc.
The Grid as a Complex System:
Faster, Bigger, Better Science on
Global Grid Infrastructure
Peter Coveney spoke about Reality Grid and his other
wide area projects, introducing the necessity for
higher level functionality, such as computational
steering and so on, and how it could be ensured that
standards are developed in the higher functionality
areas as well as the lowest levels.
Software Licensing for Grids BoF
This was a summary session for the round table that
was held at SC06 at the UK e-Science booth.
This round table session looked at the issue of using
licensed software within a Grid environment, an issue
that had arisen in previous meetings of the PGS-RG
at GGF/OGF events. The session covered the user
issues and several companies were invited to
contribute vendor issues.
Conclusion and Way Forward
It was decided that the best way for would be for
those involved to try to document the use cases that
showed how their software had been used within a
Grid environment. This meant little extra work for
the commercial organisations, but it was hoped it
would be of great benefit to users. The model the
PGS-RG would hope for is where, for example, the
company had a section on approved license models
within Grid environments in its support FAQ. For
example, there could be short write-ups based on
answers already given by support or sales staff to
questions asked by current Grid users.
Such FAQs could then be referenced from within the
Production Grid services website, as well as from
National Grid projects sites.
Grids Mean Business: Software
Licensing - A Way Forward?
Chaired by Ian Osborne, from the Grid Computing
Now KTNs, Osborne first gave a presentation on why
licensing is an issue from the industrial point of view.
Dr Wallom gave the second presentation, giving a
summary of the PGS Licensing session from the
previous day. This was intended to summarise the
number of different issues that had been identified.
The output from this session was an agreement that a
number of those present would agree to construct a
set of model use cases which would be able to
describe licensing in a Grid environment. Users (both
commercial and academic) could then use the
resource to negotiate with suppliers. It would show
how other companies had worked out a suitable
licensing model.
UR-WG
Following on from the release of the version 1
standard into public comment for the second time,
this session was used to sound out how the group
would consider extending it towards version 2. It had
been shown that although it was good for
computation, there was a lot of extra functionality
needed for storage, networking and, overall, a service.
The Astronomical Virtual
Observatory - Building Operational
Services on Pervasive Grids:
Standards in Use
Dr Wallom attended the final two sessions of this
workshop, but this meant that he did not get too
much specifically from the talk. Dr Wallom had been
asked to be on the panel since he was involved in
production Grids and production issues.
Data Management Area
Dr Wallom attended the first three sessions of the
Data Management Area discussion, but he found
that, even though this was supposed to be an EGEE
User Forum session, these sessions were dominated
by infrastructure people. This clearly highlighted the
difference between any users other than particle
physics users and the EGEE infrastructure
developers.
Experience with Application Domains
This session was much more application-focused and
useful. It did show the number of user areas that were
working on EGEE.
3.39.3
OGF22
Dr Wallom attended the following sessions at OGF22:
•
Plenary Opening Session Craig Lee, OGF-Europe,
David Wallom
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3.39 Dr David Wallom – OeRC
•
OGF-Marketing
•
OMII-Europe
•
Grid Information Retrieval-WG
•
Plenary: What OGF Can Do for Enterprises – A
View from the CIO Office, Charlie Catlett
•
HPC-BP
•
GIN-CG
•
Town Hall (two sessions)
•
Creating a Standard Software API for Data Grid
Management Systems BoF
•
The Encyclopedia of Life: A Web Page for Every
Species
•
Financial Services Workshop (second session)
•
Plenary: Cloud Computing, Grids and the
upcoming Cambrian Explosion in IT, Irvine
Wladawsky-Berger
•
Cloud Systems BoF
•
Data Management Workshop (all-day sessions)
OGF-Marketing
Walter Stewart chaired the meeting and noted that
until the outputs from the Tiger Team became clear, a
marketing strategy change would be on hold.
Paul String from the Tiger Team presented some of
their findings; the main one is that OGF should
re-focus on its more traditional e-Science/community
background. This was to include the development of a
marketing strategy that focused on ensuring that the
key successes of the organisation are heard about
outside.
There was also the feeling that the marketing activity
within the OGF had dropped in level of importance
and, as such, should be part of the GFSG meetings.
OMII-Europe
Steve Brewer gave an overview presentation of
OMII-Europe and its current status. OMII-Europe
was due to finish soon. It was not clear from this
what the concrete outputs from OMII-Europe were.
Alistair Dunlop gave an overly rosy summary at the
end of the talk.
The Italian group (represented by Sergio Andreozzi)
gave an overview of the progress to standardisation of
GLUE version 2. Dr Wallom noted that there was a
distinct lack of people from the NGS working on this
standard. The plan was for the current standard to go
into public comment in the weeks after OGF22.
Andreozzi then gave a description of the outputs of
GLUEMan, which is a system that can collate and
format the outputs from a GLUE information source
into different output ‘renderings’.
Morris Reidel gave an overview of a project that he
had been running which uses resources within EGEE
and DEISA. This was a biochemistry application, with
trivially parallel pre-processing to localise protein
docking sites of interest, and then more focused work
is done on best candidate sites on one of the DEISA
Page 170
resources. This was a very interesting example of
multi-Grid use.
Grid Information Retrieval
This session was run by Greg Newby and was
predominantly about future directions.
Plenary: Charlie Catlett
Charlie Catlett gave a talk showing how the
standards, best practices and so on that are
recommended by the OGF must be focused towards
ease of implementation and usage. This could include
how cloud computing is used in the future, and so on.
HPCBP Specification Adoption
This session had participation from MS, UVA and
Platform. The conclusions were that this very
important group and output from the OGF is in good
health, with a number of implementations and demos
from other areas. Dr Wallom asked whether they
have heard if anyone is implementing HPCBP as a
base service on a cloud network. There was going to
be a SAGA/BES implementation available though
Vrije University.
GIN-CG
Morris Reidel was introduced as the group’s new cochair. He gave a presentation on the status of all the
participating Grids and the standards that they were
using currently and that they planned to use in the
future. This included Dr Wallom’s input for the NGS.
Dr Wallom also pointed out that now that there was
this physical infrastructure linkage, it was really
necessary to show a user requirement. This would
also highlight the necessary management structures
that would need to be in place to do cross-Grid
accounting and so on.
Town Hall
As a representative of OGF-Europe, Dr Wallom was
asked to be available to answer questions on the
project. In the end, the major questions were on what
the status of OGF would be over the longer term due
to some sponsors cancelling their participation and
so on. This was answered with calls about the need
for increasing focus and to start to work towards
capturing application vendors rather than hardware
vendors, because if OGF work was going to be more
user-focused, then the majority of users were not
interested in that lower level but would be interested
in how, for example, they would be able to connect to
a Grid directly from within an application such as
GAUSSIAN, for example. Other questions concerned
the NOMCOM, which was still looking for area
directors.
OGF/EGEE Users Forum Procedures
Dr Wallom attended a meeting with EGEE and OGF
management on procedures for the spring
OGF/EGEE Users Forum and how the Requests for
Proposals to host needs to be decided and so on. This
included suggestions for locations and minimum
requirements. The EGEE and OGF RFP were both
passed on to Silvana.
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.39 Dr David Wallom – OeRC
Creating a Standard Software API for
Data Grid Management Systems BoF
This BoF was chaired by a member of Reagan’s team,
and was poorly presented, with many participants
assuming that the description meant that the BoF
would just be about extensions to the file handling
capability of SAGA. Afterwards, Dr Wallom realised
that it was subtler than that, and was about not only
the ability to separate the logical and physical file
locations but also, of course, have metadata and
separated data sets.
The Encyclopaedia of Life: A Web
Page for Every Species
Jennifer Schopf gave a roundup of her current
position within the Woods Hole Oceanographic
institute where she is working on the Encyclopaedia
of Life (http://www.eol.org). The aim is to provide a
single page (with user controlled detail levels) for
each of the ~1.8M different species of flora and fauna.
The site went live one week before OGF and died
within 11 hours due to extensive media coverage!
It would appear that this was very much a proprietary
system with little in the way of real-time data
interoperability. It was also intending to cache all of
the information in a single location, with little or no
requirement for data linkage between different
databases. It was interesting, although not too
relevant to OGF.
do with the system. If, for example, they were trying
to have a number of interacting services on resources
that they have rented and they can end up on
multiple different servers each time they are
instantiated, their overall performance may differ
greatly.
There was, at the time, no group that was dealing
with the necessary standardisation of interfaces to
cloud systems, the closest being the Computing
Community Consortium who are organising events to
try to get the cloud community together. This was
therefore a green field site for the OGF, who had the
expertise to show how interfaces defined within OGF
can be used to access clouds.
There are several technical issues that must be
addressed:
•
Performance overhead in terms of matched CPU
performance?
•
Cost gains, including size efficiency which may
include green considerations.
•
Security had currently not been fully explored
and so there was no clear illustration of what
levels of user-provider privilege separation exist.
•
What is the model of computing can you provide?
What type of internal configuration is available?
With suitable network connectivity between
nodes, for example, can you do capability
computing in clouds?
•
With major scientific problems, there is normally
a need for data-compute affinity due to the sheer
volume of data you need to process.
•
Is there an underlying scheduler for the use case
where demand exceeds supply? How would this
affect externally available services?
•
Is there going to be a situation where users would
want to link clouds together? For example, would
a user want to equate usage between different
suppliers of cloud services?
•
Are individual institutions or groups going to
want to construct their own clouds, as they have
campus Grids?
Financial Services Workshop
Dr Wallom attended the second part of the Financial
Services workshop, which consisted mostly of
presentations from providers of solutions including
Platform, HP, and IBM. It did not seem very relevant
to the financial services community unless they didn’t
know already what was available to them in the way
of systems. Dr Wallom again met representatives
from Cycle-Computing, as he had at the HTC
workshop in Edinburgh.
Cloud Computing: Grids and the
upcoming Cambrian Explosion in IT
Irving Wladawsky-Berger highlighted that the
direction in which OGF is currently heading woyuld
undoubtedly further abstract the underlying
computing infrastructure from the user, and even in
some cases, the direct user-contactable provider of
service. Wladawsky-Berger did not mention
Microsoft in his presentation.
Cloud Computing BoF
This BoF was extremely well attended with upwards
of 60 people in the room. The meeting was divided
over two sessions, with two talks in each session and
a discussion at the end of each. Geoffrey Fox, who
was defining the problem space from the viewpoint of
the OGF, started the meeting.
What are Clouds?
Fox highlighted that in a lot of ways Grids and clouds
are interchangeable in their overall end goals, though
they intend to ensure that the users of the system are
more insulated from the internal workings of the
cloud.
Dr Wallom noted that this could have issues
depending on what the users were actually trying to
It had also been shown that interoperability was
necessary for these systems, as, for example, when
the Amazon S3 system went down for a period
recently. This could have catastrophic consequences
for a business/project that had this as a core part of
their business.
The point was made that clouds could give MSI
colleges and other education institutions throughout
the US access to computing resource they normally
would be able to muster.
Dr Wallom noted the group should ensure that the
Clemson example from HTC week gets to Geoffrey
since this is a great example of a university using
Grids to get computing resources they didn’t have
access to before.
The final question from Geoffrey was should the OGF
have a cloud computing group?
The next speaker was Steven Newhouse, who
questioned severely whether clouds were new or just
a logical extension of the methods of making
computing available to users from over the last 30
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3 GridNet2 Reports
3.40 Dr Viktor Yarmolenko – Manchester
years. He again highlighted the need for standards at
two levels:
•
•
Infrastructure: low-level compute and data, as
well as management and monitoring
Interface services: AAA, as well as functional
applications and domains
With standard APIs needed, for both the
development of the cloud system itself, as well as the
higher-level services that the providers decide to run
themselves, the question from Newhouse is what can
OGF do? The obvious next step is, for example, to
show connection to a cloud instance with a light
weight interface between the cloud service interfaces
and OGF standardised interfaces.
The third talk was by a representative of Internet2
who started by questioning the effect that cloud could
have on the existing network infrastructure. The
biggest step would have to be in the perception of the
network within the whole infrastructure. It must
become an integrated part of the whole to use clouds
efficiently and reliably. The transparency of
commercial networks would also become a problem
when trying to route as efficiently as possible between
different compound services.
This would also therefore have to include smarter
network management to take into account the
changes to traffic characteristics. Dynamic circuit
networking would change the paradigm of what was
considered to be ‘the network’.
Geoffrey Fox gave the final talk on behalf of Kate
Keahey, Argonne Nat Labs, who had been doing
initial testing on use of cloud systems. This testing
used two different applications, the first of which was
a HEP application, STAR. This is a complex
application with ~2M lines of C++ and FORTRAN
developed over 10 years. It has extremely stringent
requirements on the environments in which it will
run, and it was becoming very difficult to guarantee
the availability of such environments at all
participating institutions. Through the provisioning
of a virtual machine built to these requirements,
Keahey has been able to study performance and so
on, and shown that it is slower than a directlyinstalled instance of the application, but it has a
narrow delta in performance. Dr Wallom noted that
this was probably due to network variability.
Keahey’s second application was a glide-in type of
application that takes over any resource, Grid or
cloud, and so on, to become part of her system.
Dr Wallom noted that this was the same as Condor
glide-in and that it seemed a bit of a waste of time to
re-implement it all over again.
The overall feeling from the meeting that a workshop
at the next OGF would be essential, with various
suppliers of cloud resource invited as well as the
Trusted Computing Group. The formation of a
community group though should wait until after the
workshop, though OGF was starting a trawl for cochairs, in which Dr Wallom was interested as the
PGS-RG seems to be dying a natural death.
Plenary: Grid Usage and Productivity
in HPC
Addison Snell, VP/GM of Tabor Research, presented
the results of a survey on Grids, HPC and utilisation.
Page 172
Data Management Workshop
Session 1
Paul Strong talked about eBay, which was a truly
massive scale problem, far beyond just keeping it
working in the base case. There were interesting
anecdotes about how even plug & play systems give
enough of a system interrupt storm that it can backup
the eBay system!
Erwin Laure, the Area Director, gave a roundup of
current status. There were lots of tools for file
movement but not that many for data movement.
Session 2
The Storage Network Industrial Association is
moving from just the underlying storage to focus
more on information and data management. This is
very connected to the OGF mission.
David Black, SNIA Tech, gave a very enthusiastic
description of the XAM interface that gives a
standardised layer between data (including
metadata) and client applications. This is a very
similar idea to SRB, but at the hardware level.
Session 3
Jens Jensen gave a description of what SRM is.
Session 4
This covered GridFTP and a description of the latest
Globus implementation.
Andrew Grimshaw described an implementation of
gridftp backend with a file system front-end using
RNS, Genesis II. This looks quite interesting and
could be followed up with a test deployment.
Overall, Dr Wallom thought this was a useful
workshop, though the point was raised there were no
users present, other than HEP, and another
workshop should be held in Barcelona, perhaps
called Data Management 2, Revenge of the User!
That way, the group might be able to steer the
development of some of the higher-level interfaces
such that users could interact with the systems in
very much the same way that they interact with their
desktops currently.
3.40
Dr Viktor
Yarmolenko –
Manchester
Dr Viktor Yarmolenko is a research associate at the
School of Computer Science at the University of
Manchester.
For a summary of Dr Yarmolenko’s GridNet2
activities, see section 2.40, Dr Viktor Yarmolenko –
Manchester.
3.40.1
SLA F2F
Dr Yarmolenko attended various F2F meetings in
Germany in order to discuss SLA issues.
Background
Dr Yarmolenko’s participation in OGF started at
OGF10 in Berlin, March 2004 where he presented his
work on support for dynamic workflows (pre SAGA).
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.40 Dr Viktor Yarmolenko – Manchester
Ever since he began working on Service Level
Agreements (SLAs) in early 2005, he observed a
growing interest in SLAs in the context of the
workflows. Initially, SLAs were only considered in the
context of independent jobs. This interest grew even
at a faster rate between the time when he chaired a
meeting on SLAs for the workflows (as a part of a
CoreGRID WP6 meeting 12, co-allocated with OGF20
in Manchester) and the present day. Despite a
growing interest in these two areas, the current
standards largely ignore workflows; in particular, the
WS-Agreement standard does not touch on
workflow-related aspects of SLAs.
In view of this situation, Dr Yarmolenko arranged
several meetings with OGF members and commercial
companies that are particularly active in the work on
Grid standards in the area of SLA and are interested
in its practical applications to the workflows. The
meetings took place in Karlsruhe University (11-12
March 2008) and Dortmund University (13-14 March
2008) in Germany largely because the majority of
participants were present at these locations at the
same time. The suggested agenda was to discuss and
mainly bring up his concern regarding the lack of
support for workflows. At the meetings, there were
discussions about several aspects of state of OGF
standards and their support for Grid workflows.
These are encapsulated in the following points:
1. The advantages of dynamic SLAs 13 and their
potential in solving the workflow support
problem.
2. The ability of WS-Agreement documents to refer
to other WS-Agreement documents and how
important and or necessary this is for workflow
support.
3. The ability of other parties (besides initiator and
receptor of WS-Agreement) to renegotiate parts
of the agreement (likely with limited access).
4. What are the other standards that may be
affected by and involved in the support provided
for workflow management on Grid?
Dr Yarmolenko’s Contribution
Dr Yarmolenko suggested the following scenario to
consider when addressing the points which he
outlined in the agenda (above). The workflow
allocation and execution cycle on a Grid system is
depicted in the figure below. The client submits a
(computational or other) workflow to the workflow
execution service (FW Exec), which schedules parts
of the workflow to the local resource managers (LM)
or other FW Exec (see the diagram). Each arrow in
the diagram would require a separate SLA to be
negotiated and created between the two relevant
parties for every segment of the entire workflow
submitted on a distributed resource. In addition,
each arrow may be crossing an interface between
different administrative domains.
The efficient scheduling of a workflow or even
general robustness of the system decreases
dramatically with the scale of the system. In such
scenario, a flexible or dynamic SLA is required and
the need for intensive renegotiation of SLAs is very
likely 14. To make the system scalable, the WSAgreement standard, and maybe others such as
WS-Notification, would have to be extended to allow
LMs to re-negotiate the parts of the agreement which
do not belong to them (that is, SLAs which LMs are
not involved in creating) but which indirectly relate
to the SLA that does belong to them. For example,
two LMs can have separate agreements with the same
or different FW Exec, each concerning a separate
portion of the same workflow. In this case, the
changes and failures of one SLA severely affect the
success of another SLA.
Dr Yarmolenko’s preliminary research on the
solution for this scenario suggests the involvement of
notification protocols (relates to N in the figure)
between various parties that share the responsibility
for execution of the entire workflow (point 4) and
direct re-negotiations (relates to R in the figure) of
SLAs between the parties that did not participate in
the creation of this SLA initially (points 2 and 3). The
stress on LMs and FW Execs can be significantly
reduced by carefully designed dynamic agreements
(point 1) which agreement terms may refer to as the
terms of other agreements (point 2).
This means that WS-Agreement, WS-Notification and
possibly other standards (for example, involving
authorisation) need to be reviewed.
Outcome
Dr Yarmolenko suggested a use case in which a
number of standards need to be reconsidered or
extended to support workflow executions. He also
suggested several extensions, in particular, the ability
of a WS-Agreement document to refer to another
WS-Agreement document. He promoted the usage of
dynamic SLAs 15 in the context of workflow
management and execution; and raised an important
question about the readiness and applicability of
current standards to the rising interest of users of
and experts in the workflows on Grid.
The discussion at the meetings initiated a debate
which is still ongoing (via email and other
12
CoreGrid EU Network of Excellence,
http://www.coregrid.net
13
Rizos Sakellariou and Viktor Yarmolenko, “On the
flexibility of WS-Agreement for job submission”,
Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on
Middleware for Grid Computing MGC '05, Grenoble,
France, vol. 117, 1-6 (November 2005)
14
Viktor Yarmolenko, Rizos Sakellariou, “Towards
increased expressiveness in Service Level
Agreements”, Concurrency and Computation:
Practice and Experience, vol.19, 1975-1990 (2007)
15
Viktor Yarmolenko, "Dynamic WS-Agreements"
Talk at GGF17 , Slides (PDF)
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3 GridNet2 Reports
3.41 Mr Stefan Zasada – UCL
telecommunication). It was anticipated that a more
developed form of this debate, along with more
refined arguments for a number of extensions
(mentioned in this report), would be shared at the
upcoming OGF meetings to the wider group by Dr
Yarmolenko and the initial participants of this
discussion to their respective working groups. Dr
Yarmolenko planned to put this forward at the
upcoming GRAAP-WG meetings, as well as meetings
that discuss WS-Notification, reliability and
authentication topics.
The main participants in the discussions were:
•
Viktor Yarmolenko, the University of Manchester
(GRAAP-WG)
•
Philipp Weider, University of Dortmund
(contributor to JSDL, GRAAP-WG, chair of
GSA-RG)
•
Alexander Papaspyrou, University of Dortmund
(co-chair of OGSA-RSS, participant of JSDL,
GSA, GSM)
•
Michael Parkin, Barcelona Supercomputing
Center (GRAAP-WG)
•
Ramin Yahyapour, University of Dortmund
(Coordinator of OGF Compute area, participant
in GSA-RG, GRAAP-WG, OGSA-RSS-WG and
JSDL-WG)
•
Oliver Waldrich, Fraunhofer-SCAI (Contributor
to GSA-RG, GRAAP-WG)
•
Wolfgang Ziegler, Fraunhofer-SCAI
(GRAAP-WG)
•
Dirk Neumann, Information Systems,
Albert-Ludwigs-Universität, Freiburg
•
Nikolay Borissov, Universität Karlsruhe
3.41
Mr Stefan Zasada –
UCL
Mr Stefan Zasada is a Grid middleware PhD student
at UCL.
For a summary of Mr Zasada’s GridNet2 activities, see
section 2.41, Mr Stefan Zasada – UCL.
3.41.1
OGF20
OGF20 was the first OGF meeting that Mr Zasada
had attended, and in addition to participating in the
two groups identified in his initial application (OGSA
BES and GIN), GridNet2 funding allowed him to get a
feeling for the other activities in the wider OGF. To
this end, Mr Zasada attended the following sessions
at OGF20:
•
SAGA
•
JSDL (Sessions 1 and 2)
•
GIN (Sessions 1 and 2)
•
Workflow Discussion
•
OGSA-BES
•
OGSA-EMS
Page 174
•
Vendor and Developer Adoptions
•
EGEE Applications
•
OGSA-RSS
The groups that were identified in his initial GridNet2
application are covered in more detail below.
OGSA-BES
Mr Zasada’s involvement included attending the
single BES session at OGF 20, taking notes and
participating in the discussion. Around the time of
OGF20, the BES standard proposal went into its
public comment phase. Mr Zasada used this
opportunity to comment on the BES specification,
based on his experience of using similar services such
as GridSAM, and the requirements of the projects in
which he is involved. The comments provided
sparked several threads of discussion on the OGSABES mailing list.
Mr Zasada’s team plan to extend their Application
Hosting Environment software, for which he is the
development lead, to support generic BES job
submission, and the team was in discussion with
OMII UK regarding further support for this work.
AHE was expected to be a major component in
several large-scale international projects (including
the EU funded VPH, ContraCancrum, and
ImmunoGrid projects) which have requirements to
use several different middleware stacks (such as
gLite, Unicore and Globus). Job submission to BES
interfaces in each of these middleware stacks is
essential. As a direct result of GridNet2, Mr Zasada
was in a better position to do this, and as a BES client
developer, planned to feed back his team’s
experiences to the OGSA-BES-WG. (Awareness of
what is happening in the JSDL WG, gained in part
from attendance at OGF20, was also helping this
work).
GIN
Mr Zasada’s involvement in the GIN-CG included
attending both GIN sessions at OGF 20, taking notes
and participating in the discussion.
Users within his research group, the Centre for
Computational Science at UCL, were involved in
using resources from several different Grids on a
daily basis (including UK NGS, TeraGrid and
DEISA), and so they had a deep vested interest in
Grid interoperation. GridNet2 funding allowed Mr
Zasada to participate in GIN discussions at OGF 20,
and also to report back on the work of GIN to users
back at UCL.
At the time, a lot of the GIN activity was between
resource providers.
Although no opportunity arose to contribute to GIN
activity directly at OGF20, Mr Zasada actively
monitored discussions on the GIN mailing lists and
the material generated by the GIN group, and
planned to contribute wherever possible in the
future, should the opportunity present itself.
In summary, GridNet2 funding allowed Mr Zasada to
participate in the sessions that are of most interest to
his user community, for example, contributing
comments to the BES standard based on their
experience and requirements, and also to feed back
information on what the OGF is doing to his
community of computational scientists at UCL.
3 GridNet2 Reports
3.42 Dr Ning Zhang – Manchester
3.42
Dr Ning Zhang –
Manchester
Dr Ning Zhang is a senior lecturer on Distributed
Systems Security at the School of Computer Science,
University of Manchester.
For a summary of Dr Zhang’s GridNet2 activities, see
section 2.42, Dr Ning Zhang – Manchester.
3.42.1
OGF19
Dr Zhang attended OGF19 to chair the LoA BoF
session there.
Dr Zhang initiated and chaired the LoA BoF at OGF
19. Prior to the session, Dr Zhang wrote and
disseminated a document, E-Infrastructure Security:
An Investigation of Authentication Levels of
Assurance (LoAs), which is now available at:
http://www.ogf.org/OGF19/materials/561/OGFLoA
BoF.pdf
The LoA BoF followed the theme of this document,
starting with an overview of existing LoA definitions,
including those defined by the US government’s
Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the
NIST (US National Institute of Standard and
Technology). The session then covered the
motivations for further work and emphasised that the
existing definitions only cater for human-to-machine
authentication scenarios. Finally, there was a
discussion on how to proceed to address the gaps
when current definitions were being applied in
Grid/e-Science contexts.
•
Federated Identity workshop
•
OGSA Authz WG meeting
3.42.2
OGF20
In her capacity as co-chair of the LoA RG formed at
OGF19, Dr Zhang attended OGF20.
LOA-RG
The newly-formed LOA-RG group met in the first
day, and was chaired by Dr Zhang. The meeting was
very productive, as the slides of the meeting show.
The slides are available at:
http://www.ogf.org/OGF20/materials/723/OGF20LoA-RG.ppt
The LOA-RG session discussed LoA attributes,
credential issuing and security methods. Current and
envisaged authentication architectures and
infrastructures were suggested, and some weaknesses
identified. In particular, four authentication use case
scenarios were discussed, namely:
1. End entity to service direct authentication using
end-entity credentials
2. End entity to service authentication using proxy
credentials stored locally
3. End entity to service authentication using proxy
credentials stored remotely
4. End entity to IdP authentication + IdP to service
assertion
There were 18 attendees at the LoA BoF, and there
were a lot of discussions going on. There was a
general feeling that the four levels, as specified by the
US OMB/NIST, are good ones, but more work and
community consensus were required to address the
gaps as introduced by the Grid use case scenarios.
These gaps covered several aspects, namely:
The audience commented on and gave feedback to
the presentation, and the group concluded that there
were a lot of gaps between the NIST definitions and
the LoA use cases identified. The audience was also
invited to take part in a LoA survey, part of the
activities to understand current LoA-related
procedures, processes and practices as taken by IdPs
and service providers. The survey is available at:
1. LoA attributes and factors that have not been
addressed by the existing standards
http://www.es-loa.org
2. Algorithms for the calculation of overall LoA
when an authentication process involves a chain
of authentication related activities
3. How LoA attribute values may be conveyed from
IdP to service providers
At the end of the 90 minutes session, it was agreed
that the LoA is a very important aspect of Grid
security, and a special research group in OGF, the
LOA-RG, should be formed to research and
understand the issues and gaps in relation to existing
LoA definitions and how LoA may be applied in the
Grid environment.
It was also agreed to add a work item to the proposed
OGSA-AuthN-WG to cover the transporting of LoAs
between IdPs and service providers, and to leave the
definition of the various LoA levels to IGTF.
Dr Zhang accepted leadership of this new RG,
together with Yoshio Tanaka.
In addition to chairing the LoA BoF session, Dr
Zhang also attended the following security related
meetings:
•
SAGA security discussions
The LOA-RG would play an important role in
achieving risk-based authorisation which enables
fine-grained and better security protections to Grid
resources, especially when more diversified resources
are being incorporated into the Grid environment.
OGSA Express Authentication
Security Profile
Dr Zhang also attended the meeting of the express
authentication security profile from the OGSA WG.
The profiles were very interesting and useful to help
with the LOA-RG’s understanding of the Grid users’
authentication requirements, which was an
important pre-requisite for the work being carried
out by the LOA-RG. The profiles could also shed
some light on the identification of LoA attributes and
factors in e-Science and Grid contexts.
Funding from the GridNet2 was essential to Dr
Zhang’s participation and contribution to OGF LOARG. The results from their survey have reinforced
Zhang’s view that LoA linked risk-based
authorisation is important and attractive to service
providers offering resources with varying levels of
sensitivity, and/or wishing to tailor their security
protections based upon risk levels.
Page 175
A GridNet2 Financial Statements
A
GridNet2 Financial Statements
Table 46: Summary of Costs for GridNet2 EPSRC Component
Authorised (£)
29,613.00
28,763.49
Travel and Subsistence
243,104.00
261,311.59
Exceptional Items
125,204.00
78,053.95
0.00
620.40
397,921.00
368,749.43
13,622.00
13,231.21
411,542.00
381,980.64
Staff
Equipment
Sub-total
Indirect Costs
Total
A.1
Expenditure (£)
Financial Awards and Claims
Table 47: GridNet2 Awards and Claims
Name
Applied
Awarded
Claimed
Remainder
Brunel
Mr Xiaoyu Chen
£1,000
£1,000
£973.61
£26.39
Dr Akram Khan
£1,000
£1,000
£0.00
£1,000.00
Mr Andrew Harrison
£4,000
£3,500
£3,451.75
£48.25
Mr Ian Kelley
£6,000
£6,000
£5,978.07
£21.93
Dr Omer Rana
£9,080
£7,800
£7,375.97
£424.03
Dr Matthew Shields
£2,500
£2,500
£2,304.43
£195.57
Dr Ian Taylor
£4,500
£4,500
£4,496.30
£3.70
Mr Chris Higgins
£23,400
£12,000
£10,604.01
£1,395.99
Dr Amrey Krause
£15,000
£8,000
£6,497.63
£1,502.37
Mr Tom Sugden
£15,000
£3000
£0.00
£3,000.00
£13,000
£13,000
£12,993.41
£6.59
Cardiff
Edinburgh
Glasgow
Dr Colin Perkins
Page 176
A GridNet2 Financial Statements
Name
Applied
Awarded
Claimed
Remainder
Imperial College London
Dr Stephen McGough
£69,725
£55,800
£52,911.29
£2,888.71
£12,600
£12,600
£12,805.11
-£205.11
£5,000
£5,000
£4,703.35
£296.65
£11,000
£6,000
£5,844.05
£155.95
Dr Mike Jones
£8,050
£8,050
£7,624.92
£425.08
Dr Mark McKeown
£4,620
£4,620
£0.00
£4,620
Dr Viktor Yarmolenko
£1,690
£1,000
£993.44
£6.56
Dr Ning Zhang
£4,320
£2,000
£2,000
£0.00
Kent at Canterbury
Prof David Chadwick
Manchester
Mr Donal Fellows
Dr Richard HughesJones
National e-Science Centre
Prof Malcolm
Atkinson
£30,000
£30,000
£31,892.59
-£1,892.59
Prof Richard Sinnott
£30,000
£16,000
£14,106.08
£1,893.92
£9,120
£9,120
£6,902.99
£2,217.01
£2,200
£1,750
£1,639.57
£110.43
£17,623
£17,623
£13,295.77
£4,327.23
Dr Andrew Martin
£15,000
£10,000
£4,356.09
£5,643.91
Dr David Wallom
£6,300
£6,300
£2,824.88
£3,475.12
£584
£584
£399.99
£184.01
£18,100.36
£11,399.64
National Grid Service
Dr Stephen Pickles
Newcastle upon Tyne
Dr Savas Parastatidis
OMII-UK
Dr Steven Newhouse
Oxford
Reading
Prof Mark Baker
Science and Technology Funding Council
Dr Steven Fisher
£34,500
£29,500
Page 177
A GridNet2 Financial Statements
Name
Applied
Dr Jens Jensen
Mr David Spence
Awarded
Claimed
Remainder
£1,614
£1,614
£1,354.20
£259.80
£2,000
£2,000
£1,627.13
£372.87
University College London
Dr Shantenu Jha
£12,000
£10,000
£10,000
£0.00
Mr Stefan Zasada
£5,000
£3,000
£540.30
£2,459.70
£1,500
£1,500
£1,500
£0.00
£378,926
£296,361
£250,097.29
£46,263.71
Westminster
Dr Thierry Delaitre
Totals
Table 48: Summary of GridNet2 Awards by Institution
Institution
No. of Awards
No. of People
Allocated
Claimed
Brunel
2
2
£2,000
£973.61
Cardiff
9
5
£26,080
£23,606.52
Edinburgh
3
3
£23,000
£17,101.64
Glasgow
3
5
£13,000
£12,993.41
Imperial College London
1
3
£55,800
£52,911.29
Kent at Canterbury
1
1
£12,600
£12,805.11
Manchester
6
6
£26,670
£21,165.76
National e-Science
Centre
1
2
£46,000
£45,998.67
National Grid Service
1
1
£9,120
£6,902.99
Newcastle upon Tyne
1
1
£1,750
£1,639.57
OMII-UK
1
4
£17,623
£13,295.77
Oxford
2
3
£16,300
£7,180.97
Reading
1
1
£584
£399.99
STFC-RAL
4
5
£33,114
£21,081.69
University College
London
2
2
£13,000
£10,540.30
Westminster
1
1
£1,500
£1,500.00
Page 178
B Publications
B
Publications
This appendix lists the publications that have been drafted or published
during GridNet2 where GridNet2 members are named as authors or
contributors.
B.1
Publications with GridNet2 Authors
GridNet2 members were named authors for 39 documents.
Note
Many of the documents listed in Table 49 have multiple authors. Table 49
lists only the GridNet2-funded authors for the documents.
Table 49: GridNet2 Publications - Authors
Publication
Author
Group/Area
Ref./Other
2nd International Workshop on Campus
and Community Grids
David Wallom
PGS-RG
GFD.126
A Collection of Use Cases for a Simple API
for Grid Applications
Shantenu Jha
SAGA-RG
GFD.70
A Requirements Analysis for a Simple API
for Grid Applications
Shantenu Jha
SAGA-RG
GFD.71
A Simple API for Grid Applications (SAGA)
Shantenu Jha
SAGA-COREWG
GFD.90
Adding Support to XACML for Dynamic
Delegation of Authority in Multiple
Domains
David Chadwick
10th IFIP TC6
TC11
Conf.
Advanced Security for Virtual
Organizations: The Pros and Cons of
Centralized vs Decentralized Security
Models
David Chadwick
CCGrid 2008
Conf.
Advanced Security Infrastructures for Grid
Education
David Chadwick
WMSCI 2006
Conf.
Richard Sinnott
Anthony Stell
Richard Sinnott
Anthony Stell
Attributes used in OGSI Authorization
David Chadwick
OGSAAUTHZ-WG
GFD.57
Authorisation using Attributes from
Multiple Authorities
David Chadwick
WETICE 2006
Best Paper
Award
Building a Modular Authorization
Infrastructure
David Chadwick
AHM 2006
Conf.
Grid Certificate Profile
Jens Jensen
CAOPS-WG
GFD.125
Mike Jones
Page 179
B Publications
Publication
Author
Group/Area
Ref./Other
Grid Economy Use Cases
William Lee
GESA-WG
GFD.60
GHPN-RG
GFD.122
Steven Newhouse
Grid Network Services Use Cases from the
e-Science Community
Richard HughesJones
Mark Leese
Information Dissemination in the Grid
Environment – Base Specifications
Steve Fisher
INFOD-WG
GFD.110
Job Submission Description Language
(JSDL) Specification v1.0
Donal Fellows
JSDL-WG
GFD.56
Multiplexing RTP Data and Control
Packets on a Single Port
Colin Perkins
AVT WG
(IETF)
Internet Draft
Obligation for Role Based Access Control
David Chadwick
SSNDS07
Conf.
OGSA® Basic Execution Service v1.0
William Lee
OGSA-BESWG
GFD.108
Stephen McGough
Steven Newhouse
Stephen Pickles
OGSA® Data Architecture
Dave Berry
OGSA-D-WG
GFD.121
OGSA® EMS Architecture Scenarios, v1.0
Steven Newhouse
OGSA-WG
GFD.106
OGSA® Resource Selection Services:
Specification
Donal Fellows
OGSA-RSSWG
Draft
OGSI Authorization Requirements
David Chadwick
OGSA-AuthzWG
GFD.67
Policy for Supporting Grid Education and
Training
Malcolm Atkinson
ET-CG
Draft
Providing Secure Coordinated Access to
Grid Services
David Chadwick
MGC 2006
Conf.
RTP and the Datagram Congestion Control
Protocol
Colin Perkins
AVT WG
(IETF)
Internet Draft
SDP: Session Description Protocol
Colin Perkins
AVT WG
(IETF)
RFC4566
Supporting Decentralized, Security focused
Dynamic Virtual Organizations across the
Grid
David Chadwick
Conf.
Richard Sinnott
2nd IEEE Conf
on e-Science
and Grid
The Open Grid Services Architecture,
version 1.5
Dave Berry
OGSA-WG
GFD.80
The Storage Resource Manager Interface
Specification Version 2.2
Jens Jensen
GSM-WG
GFD.129
Usage Scenarios for a Grid Resource
Allocation Agreement Protocol
Stephen Pickles
GRAAP-WG
Draft
Page 180
B Publications
Publication
Author
Group/Area
Ref./Other
Use-Cases for Grid Checkpoint and
Recovery
Stephen Pickles
GRIDCPR-WG
GFD.92
Use Cases for Trusted Computing
Andrew Martin
TCG-RG
Draft
Andrew Cooper
Use of SAML for OGSI Authorization
David Chadwick
OGSA-AuthzWG
GFD.66
Use of SAML to Retrieve Authorization
Credentials
David Chadwick
OGSA-AuthzWG
Draft
Use of XAMCL Request Context to Obtain
an Authorisation Decision
David Chadwick
OGSA-AuthzWG
Draft
Web Services Data Access and Integration The Core (WS-DAI) Specification, v1.0
Amrey Krause
DAIS-WG
GFD.74
Web Services Data Access and Integration The Relational Realisation (WS-DAIR)
Specification, v1.0
Amrey Krause
DAIS-WG
GFD.76
Web Services Data Access and Integration The XML Realization (WS-DAIX)
Specification, v1.0
Amrey Krause
DAIS-WG
GFD.75
Workshop on Grid Applications: From
Early Adopters to Mainstream Users
David Wallom
PGS-RG
GFD.68
B.2
Publications with GridNet2 Contributors
GridNet2 members were named in acknowledgements or as contributors to
20 documents.
Table 50: GridNet2 Publications - Contributors
Publication
Contributor
Group
Ref.
A Requirements Analysis for a Simple API
for Grid Applications
Steven Newhouse
SAGA-RG
GFD.71
A Simple API for Grid Applications (SAGA)
Steven Newhouse
SAGA-COREWG
GFD.90
Stephen Pickles
ByteIO OGSA® WSRF Basic Profile
Rendering 1.0
Neil Chue Hong
BYTEIO-WG
GFD.88
ByteIO Specification 1.0
Neil Chue Hong
BYTEIO-WG
GFD.87
Defining the Grid: A Roadmap for OGSA®
Standards v1.1
Dave Berry
OGSA-WG
GFD.123
Abdeslem Djaoui
Steven Newhouse
Page 181
B Publications
Publication
Contributor
Group
Ref.
HPC Basic Profile, v1.0
Steven Newhouse
OGSA-HPCPWG
GD.114
Stephen Pickles
JSDL HPC Profile Application Extension,
v1.0
Donal Fellows
JSDL-WG
GFD.111
JSDL SPMD Application Extension, v1.0
Donal Fellows
JSDL-WG
GFD.115
William Lee
Stephen McGough
Stephen Pickles
OGSA-ByteIO Interoperability Testing
Specification
Neil Chue Hong
OGSA-ByteIOWG
Draft
OGSA® Basic Security Profile 1.0 – Core
Dave Berry
OGSA-WG
GFD.86
OGSA-WG
GFD.106
OGSA-WG
GFD.120
OGSA-WG
GFD.59
Abdeslem Djaoui
Steven Newhouse
OGSA® EMS Architecture Scenarios,
Version 1.0
Dave Berry
Donal Fellows
Stephen McGough
OGSA® Glossary of Terms v1.6
Dave Berry
Abdeslem Djaoui
Donal Fellows
OGSA Profile Definition v1.0
Dave Berry
Abdeslem Djaoui
Donal Fellows
Stephen McGough
Steven Newhouse
OGSA® Resource Selection Services:
Specification
Stephen Pickles
OGSA-RSS-WG
Draft
OGSA® Security Profile 1.0 – Secure
Channel
Dave Berry
OGSA-WG
GFD.99
OGSA-WG
GFD.72
Abdeslem Djaoui
Steven Newhouse
OGSA® WSRF Basic Profile 1.0
Dave Berry
Abdeslem Djaoui
Steven Newhouse
Policy for Supporting Grid Education and
Training
Mark Baker
ET-CG
Draft
SAGA Extension: Service Discovery API
Steve Fisher
SAGA-WG
Draft
Usage Record – Format Recommendation
Donal Fellows
UR-WG
GFD.98
Page 182
B Publications
Publication
Contributor
Group
Ref.
Web Services Agreement Specification (WSAgreement)
Donal Fellows
GRAAP-WG
GFD.107
Steven Newhouse
Stephen Pickles
Page 183
C Standardisation Participation by Area
C
Standardisation Participation by Area
The following table lists the areas of standardisation in which GridNet2
members were involved. GridNet2 members were involved in 49 areas.
Table 51: Standardisation Participation by UK e-Science Staff
Group
People
Applications and Programming Models Environment
Life Sciences Grid RG
Oluwafemi Ajayi, NeSC
Richard Sinnott, NeSC
Ian Taylor, Cardiff
Production Grid Management RG
David Wallom, Oxford
Simple API for Grid Applications RG
Mario Antonioletti, Edinburgh
Steven Fisher, STFC-RAL
Neil Chue Hong, OMII-UK
Shantenu Jha, UCL
Mike Jones, Manchester
Amrey Krause, Edinburgh
Stephen McGough, Imperial
Vesselin Novov, Imperial
Steven Newhouse, OMII-UK
Stephen Pickles, NGS
Ian Taylor, Cardiff
Elias Theocharopoulos, Edinburgh
Stefan Zasada, UCL
Architecture
OGSA Basic Execution Service WG
Malcolm Atkinson, NeSC
William Lee, Imperial
Stephen McGough, Imperial
Steven Newhouse, OMII-UK
Savas Parastatidis, Newcastle upon Tyne
Stephen Pickles, NGS
Stefan Zasada, UCL
Page 184
C Standardisation Participation by Area
Group
People
Open Grid Services Architecture WG
Dave Berry, NeSC
Abdeslem Djaoui, STFC-RAL
Donal Fellows, Manchester
William Lee, Imperial
Stephen McGough, Imperial
Steven Newhouse, NGS
Savas Parastatidis, Newcastle upon Tyne
Omer Rana, Cardiff
Ian Taylor, Cardiff
Ning Zhang, Manchester
Reference Model WG
Donal Fellows, Manchester
Amrey Krause, Edinburgh
Semantic Grid RG
Omer Rana, Cardiff
Compute
Grid Resource Allocation Agreement Protocol
WG
Oluwafemi Ajayi, NeSC
Donal Fellows, Manchester
William Lee, Imperial
Stephen McGough, Imperial
Stephen Pickles, NGS
Omer Rana, Cardiff
Viktor Yarmolenko, Manchester
Grid Scheduling Architecture RG
Donal Fellows
William Lee, Imperial
Stephen McGough, Imperial
High Performance Computing Profile WG
Malcolm Atkinson, NeSC
Donal Fellows, Manchester,
Stephen McGough, Imperial
Vesselin Novov, Imperial
Stephen Pickles, NGS
OGSA Resource Selection Services WG
Donal Fellows, Manchester
Stephen McGough, Imperial
Stephen Pickles, NGS
Stefan Zasada, UCL
Page 185
C Standardisation Participation by Area
Group
People
Data
Data and Access Integration Services WG
Mario Antonioletti, Edinburgh
Malcolm Atkinson, NeSC
Dave Berry, NeSC
Savas Parastatidis, Newcastle upon Tyne
Neil Chue Hong, OMII-UK
Amrey Krause, Edinburgh
Elias Theocharopoulos, Edinburgh
Data Format Description Language WG
Mario Antonioletti, Edinburgh
Malcolm Atkinson, NeSC
Amrey Krause, Edinburgh
GridFTP WG
Malcolm Atkinson, NeSC
Grid File System WG
Malcolm Atkinson, NeSC
Dave Berry, NeSC
Neil Chue Hong, OMII-UK
Mike Jones, Manchester
Grid Information Retrieval WG
David Wallom, Oxford
Grid Storage Management WG
Malcolm Atkinson, NeSC
Dave Berry, NeSC
Jens Jensen, STFC-RAL
Mike Jones, Manchester
Information Dissemination WG
Malcolm Atkinson, NeSC
Abdeslem Djaoui, STFC-RAL
Steve Fisher, STFC-RAL
Network Measurements WG
Richard Hughes-Jones, Manchester
Mark Leese, STFC-RAL
OGSA ByteIO WG
Malcolm Atkinson, NeSC
Neil Chue Hong, OMII-UK
Amrey Krause, Edinburgh
Page 186
C Standardisation Participation by Area
Group
People
OGSA-Database Access and Integration WG
Oluwafemi Ajayi, NeSC
Mario Antonioletti, Edinburgh
Malcolm Atkinson, NeSC
Neil Chue Hong, OMII-UK
Amrey Krause, Edinburgh
Savas Parastatidis, Newcastle
Richard Sinott, NeSC
Anthony Stell, NeSC
Elias Theocharopoulos, NeSC
OGSA Data WG
Malcolm Atkinson, NeSC
Dave Berry, NeSC
Mario Antonioletti, Edinburgh
Neil Chue Hong, OMII-UK
Amrey Krause, Edinburgh
Elias Theocharopoulos, Edinburgh
OGSA Data Movement Interface WG
Mario Antonioletti, Edinburgh
Dave Berry, NeSC
Neil Chue Hong, OMII-UK
Amrey Krause, Edinburgh
e-Science
Astronomy Applications RG
David Chadwick, UKC
Richard Hughes-Jones, Manchester
Steven Newhouse, OMII-UK
David Wallom, Oxford
Audio/Video Transport WG
Colin Perkins, Glasgow
Certificate Authority Operations WG
Oluwafemi Ajayi, NeSC
David Chadwick, UKC
Jens Jensen, STFC-RAL
Mike Jones, Manchester
Richard Sinnott, NeSC
Curricula Development
Mark Baker, Reading
Education and Training CG
Malcolm Atkinson, NeSC
Donal Fellows, Manchester
Jipu Jiang, NeSC
Amrey Krause, Edinburgh
Anthony Stell, NeSC
Page 187
C Standardisation Participation by Area
Group
People
Grid Computing Environments RG
Ian Kelley, Cardiff
Grid Interoperation Now CG
Oluwafemi Ajayi, NeSC
Malcolm Atkinson, NeSC
Dave Berry, NeSC
Thierry Delaitre, Westminster
Jens Jensen, STFC-RAL
Mike Jones, Manchester
William Lee, Imperial
Stephen McGough, Imperial
Steven Newhouse, OMII-UK
Stephen Pickles, NGS
Richard Sinnott, NeSC
Stefan Zasada, UCL
David Wallom, Oxford
Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences CG
Omer Rana, Cardiff
Ian Taylor, Cardiff
Multiparty Multimedia Session Control WG
Colin Perkins, Glasgow
Workflow Management RG
Andrew Harrison, Cardiff
Ian Kelley, Cardiff
Stephen McGough, Imperial
Vesselin Novov, Imperial
Omer Rana, Cardiff
Matthew Shields, Cardiff
Richard Sinnott, NeSC
Ian Taylor, Cardiff
Elias Theocharopoulos, Edinburgh
Enterprise
Enterprise Grid Requirements RG
Oluwafemi Ajayi, NeSC
Storage Networking CG
Richard Hughes-Jones, Manchester
Infrastructure
Appliance Aggregation RG
Mike Jones, Manchester
Omer Rana, Cardiff
Ian Taylor, Cardiff
Grid and Virtualization WG
Page 188
Richard Hughes-Jones, Manchester
C Standardisation Participation by Area
Group
People
Grid High-Performance Networking RG
Richard Hughes-Jones, Manchester
Mark Leese, STFC-RAL
Network Mark-up Language WG
Richard Hughes-Jones, Manchester
Network Measurements WG
Richard Hughes-Jones, Manchester
Mr Mark Leese, STFC-RAL
Scheduling and Resource Management
Configuration Description, Deployment and
Lifecycle Management WG
William Lee, Imperial
Stephen McGough, Imperial
Stephen Pickles, NGS
Grid Laboratory Uniform Environment WG
Donal Fellows, Manchester
Mike Jones, Manchester
Job Submission Development Language WG
Donal Fellows, Manchester
Mike Jones, Manchester
William Lee, Imperial
Stephen McGough, Imperial
Stephen Pickles, NGS
Omer Rana, Cardiff
Stefan Zasada, UCL
OGSA Resource Usage Service WG
Xiaoyu Chen, Brunel
Donal Fellows, Manchester
Mike Jones, Manchester
Stephen McGough, Imperial
Vesselin Novov, Imperial
Richard Sinnott, NeSC
Usage Record WG
Xiaoyu Chen, Brunel
Donal Fellows, Manchester
Mike Jones, Manchester
David Wallom, Oxford
Security
Firewall Issues RG
Richard Hughes-Jones, Manchester
Mike Jones, Manchester
Mark Leese, STFC-RAL
Andrew Martin, Oxford
David Spence, STFC-RAL
Page 189
C Standardisation Participation by Area
Group
People
Levels of Authentication Assurance RG
Mike Jones, Manchester
David Chadwick, UKC
Ning Zhang, Manchester
OGSA Authorization WG
Oluwafemi Ajayi, NeSC
David Chadwick, UKC
Jipu Jiang, NeSC
Mike Jones, Manchester
Andrew Martin, Oxford
Richard Sinnott, NeSC
David Spence, STFC-RAL
Anthony Stell, NeSC
Elias Theocharopoulos, Edinburgh
Trusted Computing RG
Andrew Martin, Oxford
David Wallom, Oxford
Page 190
D Events
D
Events
GridNet2 members were able to attend 45 separate events, as listed in the
following table.
Table 52: GridNet2 Events
Event
Date
Location
GN2 Attendees
ETSI Meeting – Nov 06
30 Nov – 1 Dec 06
Sophia-Antipolis,
France
1
GFSG F2F – Jan 06
11-13 Jan 06
San Francisco, US
3
GFSG – Feb 06
11-12 Feb 06
Athens, Greece
1
GFSG – May 06
7-9 May 06
Tokyo, Japan
1
GFSG F2F – Jul 06
26-27 Jul 06
London, UK
1
GFSG – Sep 06
9-10 Sep 06
Washington DC,
US
1
GFSG – Dec 06
6-8 Dec 06
Amsterdam, The
Netherlands
1
GGF14
26-30 Jun 05
Chicago, US
3
GGF15
3-6 Oct 05
Boston, US
11
GGF16
13-16 Feb 06
Athens, Greece
17
GGF17
10-12 May 06
Tokyo, Japan
10
GGF18
11-14 Sep 06
Washington DC,
USA
19
ICEAGE Curricula Development
Workshop
14-15 Feb 08
Brussels, Belgium
1
IETF64
6-11 Nov 05
Vancouver, Canada
1
IETF65
19-24 Mar 06
Dallas, US
1
IETF66
10-14 Jul 06
Montreal, Canada
1
IETF67
5-10 Nov 06
San Diego, US
1
IETF68
18-23 Mar 07
Prague, Czech
Republic
1
IETF69
21-28 Jul 07
Chicago, US
1
IETF70
2-7 Dec 07
Vancouver, Canada
1
INFOD-WG F2F – May 06
14-18 May 06
New York, US
1
INFOD-WG F2F – Feb 07
3-8 Feb 07
Knoxville, US
1
ISSGC 07
8-20 Jul
MarieFred, Sweden
1
Page 191
D Events
Event
Date
Location
GN2 Attendees
LGC Workshop
2-3 May 06
Castleton, UK
1
OGC Committee Meeting
Jun 06
Edinburgh, UK
1
OGF19
29 Jan-2 Feb 07
Chapel Hill, US
10
OGF20
7-11 May 07
Manchester, UK
23
OGF21
15-19 Oct 07
Seattle
19
OGF22
25-28 Feb 08
Cambridge, US
16
OGF GIN F2F – Mar 07
14 Mar 07
CERN, Switzerland
1
OGSA F2F 12
15-19 Aug 05
Sunnyvale, US
1
OGSA F2F 13
16-20 Jan 06
Sunnyvale, US
3
OGSA F2F 14
4-7 Apr 06
Sunnyvale, US
1
OGSA F2F 15
17-20 Jul 06
Argonne, US
1
OGSA F2F 16
8-17 Nov 06
Tampa, US
1
OGSA F2F 17
14-16 Mar 07
Belmont, US
1
OGSA F2F 18
13-15 Aug 07
Sunnyvale, US
3
OGSA F2F 19
9-11 Jan 08
London, UK
2
SAGA Design and
Implementation Meeting
05 Jan 06
-
1
SLA F2F – Mar 08
11-14 Mar 08
Karlsruhe and
Dortmund,
Germany
1
SUMOVER – Nov 05
28-30 Nov 05
London, UK
1
SUMOVER – Apr 07
15 Jan 07
London, UK
1
SuperComputing 06
8-17 Nov 06
Tampa, US
1
SuperComputing 07
10-16 Nov 07
Reno, US
2
TC-WG Members Meeting
14-16 Nob 06
Texas, US
1
Page 192
D Events
D.1
GridNet2 e-Science Workshop (OGF21)
Prof Omer Rana, Dr Stephen McGough and Dr Ian Taylor organised the
GridNet2 e-Science workshop that took place at OGF21. The aim of the
workshop was to disseminate information about the work being done by
GridNet2 members to both the GridNet2 members and the broader Grid
community who attend OGF meetings, and to encourage communication
between the different areas of OGF in which GridNet2 members participate.
For full details about the workshop, see:
http://wiki.cs.cf.ac.uk/twiki/bin/view/Sandbox/OpenGridForum21
The GridNet2 e-Science Workshop was held over three sessions at OGF21, and
in total, 19 people attended the three sessions. Each of the three sessions had
a theme:
•
Use of novel computer science techniques
•
Demonstration provided through applications of e-Science concepts
•
Standards activities and coordination across standards bodies
•
The following people gave presentations at the GridNet2 e-Science
workshop:
Session 1
•
Prof Rana, Dr Taylor and Dr McGough introduced the workshop.
•
Dr Shields gave a presentation in the area of workflow on the work being
done at Cardiff on workflow sharing and the work of the WFM-RG. There
was also input from Mr Kelley, Mr Harrison and Dr Taylor.
•
Mr Higgins gave a presentation about the geo-spatial work in which he is
involved.
•
Mr Fellows gave a presentation about OGSA, JSDL, Usage Record,
Resource Selection and the Reference Model.
•
Prof Sinnott gave a presentation about security.
•
Dave De Roure, who was not funded by GridNet2, gave a presentation
about semantic Grids, and e-Arts and e-Humanities.
Session 2
•
Prof Chadwick gave a presentation about the work of the OGSA-AuthzWG over the last four years.
•
Dr Jha gave a presentation about SAGA.
•
Prof Rana gave a presentation about the work of the GRAAP-WG.
•
Dr Hughes-Jones gave a presentation about the NM-WG and also the
work of the GFSG
The presentations were followed by a brief discussion.
Session 3
Dr McGough gave a presentation about JSDL, QoS, workflow, and OGSA.
Session 3 concluded with a discussion about the sustainability of the work
being done and the way forward for such work. A description of the points
raised in the discussion is available at:
Page 193
D Events
http://wiki.cs.cf.ac.uk/twiki/bin/viewfile/Sandbox/OpenGridForum21?rev=2
;filename=ogf21-workshop.ppt
The workshop played a valuable part in opening up the work being done by
individuals in the different areas, and the possibilities for continuing this
work and disseminating the information in the future.
Page 194
Glossary
Glossary
A
A
AA
Attribute Authority
AAA
Authentication, Authorisation and
Accounting.
The principal components of
security.
An IETF working group
A-WARE
An easy Way to Access Grid
Resources
Axis
An open source, XML-based Web
service framework
Abilene
The Internet2 network for the US
research and education community.
B
AD
Area Director
B2B
Business-to-business
AFP
Application Filter Profile – an
HPCBP extension
BeinGrid
Business Experiments In Grid
AG
Access Grid
BeSTMan
Berkely Storage Management
System
BIRN
Biomedical Informatics Research
Network
BLO
Business Level Object
An advanced videoconferencing
application that combines audio
and video tools to allow people in
different locations worldwide to
meet in a virtual venue.
AHM
All Hands Meeting
BLOBs
Binary Large Objects
AIDS
Application Instance Document
Schema
BoF
Birds-of-a-feather meeting
BPEL
AIST
National Institute of Advanced
Industrial Science and Technology
(Japan)
Business Process Execution
Language
BPMN
Business Process Modelling
Notation
BREIN
Business objective-driven Reliable
and Intelligent Grids for Real
Business
BRIDGES
Biomedial Research Informatics
Delivered by Grid Enabled Services
AJAX
Asynchronous Javascript and XML
AKOGRIMO
Access to Knowledge through the
Grid in a Mobile World
An EU project for distributed
computing
AMR
Adaptive Multi-Rate compression
An audio data compression scheme
C
AMUC
Associated Motion Capture User
Categories
CA
Certificate Authority
API
Application Programming Interface
caGrid
APP-AGG
Appliance Aggregation
The service oriented infrastrucure
for the Cancer Biomedical
Informatics Grid.
CAOPS
Certificate Authority Operations.
An OGF research group.
ARC
Advance Resource Connector
AssessGrid
An EU project to develop and
integrate methods for risk
assessment and management in all
Grid layers
Astro RG
Astronomy Applications Research
Group
An OGF working group.
CardSpace
Client software, from Microsoft, for
the Identity Metasystem.
CAS
Community Authorization Service
CASTOR
CERN Advanced Storage Manager
CATNETS
A project for the evaluation of the
Catallaxy paradigm for
decentralised operation of dynamic
application networks.
CCLRC
An OGF research group.
AT
Application Template – an HPCBP
extension
Authn
Authentication
Council for the Central Laboratory
of Research Councils.
Authz
Authorisation
Merged with PPARC to form the
STFC in April 2007.
AVT
Audio-Visual Transport
CCR
Concurrency and Coordination
Page 195
Glossary
C
D
Runtime
DCCP
Datagram Congestion Control
Protocol
Deegree
An open source community
providing OGC interfaces.
DEGREE
Dissemination and Exploitation of
Grids in Earth Science
DEPR
Data End Point Reference
An OGF working group
DESY
Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron
CG
Community Group
DFDL
Data Format Description Language
CIM
Common Information Model
DGAS
Data Grid Accounting System
CIS
Credential Issuing Service
DigSigs
Digital signatures
CMOS
Complementary Metal Oxide
Semiconductor
Discovery
Net
CMS
Content Management System
Condor
A scalable, customised job
scheduler
Software for arranging database
access and knowledge discovery
procedures, and provides a means
of describing workflow between
analysis service providers, data
owners and the scientists who
arrange and execute the workflows
CondorShibboleth
An integration of Condor and
Shibboleth
DIT
Directory Information Tree (X.500)
Contra
Cancrum
Clinically Oriented Translational
Cancer Multilevel Modelling
DM
Distributed Management
DMIS
CP
Certificate Policy
Data Movement Interface
Standardisation
CPS
Certification Practices Statement
DMTF
Distributed Management Task
Force
CREAM
Computing Resource Execution and
Management
DOM
Document Object Model
An architecture and library for
monitoring WS-Agreements
Dorian
A Grid user management service
CREMONA
DPM
Disk Pool Manager
CROWN
China Research and development
environment Over Wide-area
Network
DRMAA
Distributed Resource Management
Application API
Credential Validation Service
DSLA
Dynamic Service Level Agreement
CVS
An EGEE project to bring together
the GMES and Grid communuties
DSS
Decentralised Software Services
Cyclops
DTI
Department of Trade and Industry
(UK), now known as the
Department for Business Enterprise
and Regulatory Reform
CCT
Center for Computation and
Technology at LSU
CDL
Configuration Description
Language for CDDLM
CDDLM
Configuration Description,
Deployment and Lifecycle
Management
D
D-Grid
Deutscher-Grid
DTLS
Datagram Transport Layer Security
DAGMan
Directed Acyclic Graph Manager
DyVOSE
Dynamic Virtual Organisations in
e-Science Education
DAIS
Data Access and Integration
Services
An OGF working group
E
DAML
DARPA Agent Markup Language
EACL
Extended Access Control List
DART
Digital Audio Retrieval using Triana
EC-GIN
Europe-China Grid
Internetworking
dCache
A system for storing and retrieving
large amounts of data, distributed
among a large number of
heterogeneous server nodes
EDA
Electronic Design Automation
EDG
European Data Grid
EDGeS
Enabling Desktop Grids for
e-Science
DCC
Page 196
Digital Curation Centre
Glossary
E
F
An EU project
EDINA
National Academic Data Centre,
based in Edinburgh.
EGA
Enterprise Grid Alliance
Merged with the GGF in 2006 to
form the OGF
EGEE
Enabling Grids for e-Science
eMinerals
A project to use computer
simulations performed on
molecular length and time scales
to address environmental issues
EnLIGHTened
Computing
A project to develop dynamic,
adaptive, coordinated and
optimised use of distributed
computing resources
EoL
Encyclopedia of Life
EPCC
Edinburgh Parallel Computing
Centre
EPR
End Point Reference
EPSRC
F2F
Face-to-face meeting
FI
Firewall Issues
An OGF research group
FIPA
Foundation for Intelligent Physical
Agents
An IEEE Computer Society
standards organisation that
promotes agent-based technology
and the interoperability of its
standards with other technologies
FSP
File Staging Profile – an HPCP
extension
FTS
File Transfer Service
G
G-lambda
A project to establish a standard
web services interface between Grid
resource management systems and
network resource management
systems.
Engineering and Physical
Sciences Research Council
G-PBox
A policy management service for
production Grids.
eRep
An EU project to provide theorydriven and empirically backedup guidelines for designing
reputation technologies
G-QoSM
Grid Quality of Service
Management
GACL
Grid Access Control List
ESB
Enterprise Service Bus
GAUSSIAN
Software for computation chemistry
ESLEA
Exploitations of Switched
Lightpaths for e-Science
Applications
GCE
Grid Computing Environments
ESLoA
e-Infrastructure Security Levels
of Assurance
GDI-Grid
Spatial Data Infrastructure Grid
GÉANT
ESNet
Energy Sciences Network
A European multi-gigabit computer
network for research and education
purposes
ESP-Grid
A project to investigate how
Shibboleth offers solutions for
Grid authentication,
authorisation and security
issues.
GEESE
Grid Enabling EDINA Services
GEMEPS
Grid Enabled Microarray
Expression Profile
Genesi-DR
Ground European Network for
Earth Science Interoperations –
Digital Repositories
Genesis II
An open source, standards-based
Grid platform designed to support
both high-throughput computing
and secure data sharing
GEODE
Grid Enabled Occupational Data
Environment
GEOSS
Global Earth Observation System of
Systems
GFAC
Grid Forum Advisory Committee
GFS
Grid File System
ESRC
Economic and Social Research
Council
ESRI
Environmental Systems
Research Institute
ET
Education and Training
An OGF research group
An OGF community group
ETF
Engineering Task Force
eToken
A USB-based strong
authentication and password
management solution
ETSI
European Telecommunications
Standards Institute
eVLBI
electronic Very Long Baseline
Interferometry
An OGF working group
GFSG
Grid Forum Steering Group
Page 197
Glossary
G
GGF
G
Global Grid Forum
GRIDCC
Grid Enabled Remote
Instrumentation with Distributed
Control and Computation
GRIDCPR
Grid Checkpoint and Recovery
Merged with the Enterprise Grid
Alliance to form the OGF in 2006
GGUS
Global Grid User Support
An OGF working group
Part of EGEE
GHI
Genetic Healthcare Initiative, now
known as GSSFHS
GHPN
Grid High Performance Networking
GridFTP
A high-performance, secure,
reliable data transfer protocol
GridPP
UK Grid for Particle Physics
Research
GRIDREL
Grid Reliability and Robustness
An OGF research group
GI
Geographic Information
GID
Group identifier
GIN
Grid Interoperation Now
An OGF community group
GIN-DATA
The GIN-CG’s interoperation
project for data management and
movement
GIN-JOBS
The GIN-CG’s interoperation
project for job description and
submission
GIR
Grid Information Retrieval
An OGF working group
An OGF research group
GRIDRPC
Grid Remote Procedure Call
An OGF working group
GridRUS
An implementation of the OGF
Resource Usage Service that
provides a queryable store of usage
records for Grid infrastructure
providers.
GridSAM
A web service for job submission
and monitoring that uses the JSDL
specification
GridShib
An integration of Shibboleth and
Globus
GridSite
A set of extensions to the Apache
web server and a toolkit for Grid
credentials, GACLs and HTTP(S)
protocol operations
GIS
Geographic Information Systems
GLASS
GLASgow implementation of
Shibboleth
GLIF
Global Lambda Integrated Facility
GridSphere
gLite
Next generation middleware for
Grid computing
An open source, portlet-based Web
portal
GRIDVIRT
Grid and Virtualisation
Globus
An open source, software toolkit
used for building Grid systems and
applications
GLOW
Grid Laboratory of Wisconsin
GLUE
Grid Laboratory Uniform
Environment
An OGF working group
Grouper
An open source toolkit for
managing group information across
integrated applications and
repositories
GSA
Grid Scheduling Architecture
An OGF research group
An OGF working group
GLUEMan
A framework to manage
information providers for GLUE 2.0
GME
Grid Management Entity
GMES
Global Monitoring for Environment
and Security
GNAB2
GridNet2 Advisory Board
GNI
Grid Network Interface
GRAAP
Grid Resource Allocation
Agreement Protocol
An OGF working group
GridHypervisor
Page 198
The prior name for OpenNebula, a
virtual infrastructure engine
GSI
Grid Security Infrastructure
GSM
Grid Storage Management
An OGF working group
gSOAP
A cross-platform development
toolkit for C and C++ SOAP XML
Web services
GSSFHS
Generation Scotland, Scottish
Family Health Study
GT4
Globus Toolkit version 4
GTS
Grid Trust Service
GUMS
Grid User Management System
GUNI
Global University Network for
Innovation
Glossary
G
GUS
I
with Grid technologies
Grid User Services
An OGF research group
H
HDTV
High Definition Television
HEP
High Energy Physics
HLRSStuttgart
INFN
Istituto Nazionale di Fisica
Nucleare
INFOD
Information Dissemination
An OGF working group
INSPIRE
Infrastructure for Spatial
Information in Europe
High Performance Computing
(Höchstleistungsrechenzentrum) at
the University of Stuttgart
IPR
Intellectual Property Rights
IPTV
Internet Protocol Television
HPC
High Performance Computing
iRODS
i Rule Oriented Data Systems
HPC4U
Generic, modular Grid middleware
which enables an increased level of
Fault Tolerance and covers multiple
administrative domains
ISI
Institute of Information Science at
the University of California
ISSGC
International Summer School on
Grid Computing
HPCBP
High Performance Computing Basic
Profile
ITU
HPCP
High Performance Computing
Profile
International Telecommunication
Union
ITU-T
The ITU Telecommunication
Standardisation Sector
IVOA
International Virtual Observatory
Alliance
An OGF working group
HPDC
High Performance Distributed
Computing
HSM
Hardware Signing Model
J
JBI
Java Business Integration
Identity and Access Management
JDBC
Java Database Connectivity
Part of MAMS
JISC
IANA
Internet Assigned Numbers
Authority
Joint Information Systems
Committee
JRA
Joint Research Activity
ICE
Internet Connectivity
Establishment
JSDL
Job Submission Description
Language
ICEAGE
International Collaboration to
Extend and Advance Grid
Education
JSON
JavaScript Object Notation
JXTA
Juxtapose
I
IAM
ICENI
Imperial College e-Science
Networked Infrastructure
ID
Information Document
An OGF term.
IDL
Interface Description Language
IdP
Identity Provider
IETF
Internet Engineering Task Force
IEEE
Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers
IGTF
Internation Grid Trust Federation
iLBC
Internet Low Bit Rate Codec
IMAA
Institute of Methodologies for
Environmental Analysis
ImmunoGrid
A computer model of the human
immune system, implemented
An open source, peer-to-peer
networking protocol, originated by
Sun Microsystems
K
Kepler
An open source, scientific workflow
system
Kerberos
A network authentication protocol
Knoogle
An OMII-UK project to develop a
framework that can be used for
creating and deploying bespoke and
reconfigurable matchmaking and
brokerage components.
KnowARC
Grid-enabled Know-how Sharing
Technology Based on ARC Services
and Open Standards
KPI
Key Performance Indicator
Page 199
Glossary
K
Kryptus
M
Broker
A Brazilian HSM project
myVocs
L
A virtual organisation collaboration
system
LCAS
Local Centre Authorisation Service
N
LCG
LHC Computing Grid
nanoCMOS
LCMAPS
Local Credential Mapping Service
A project to investigate the
challenges in nanoCMOS design.
LDAP
Lightweight Directory Access
Protocol
nanoHUB
A web-based resource for research,
education and collaboration in
nanotechnology
LFC
LCG File Catalogue
NARA
LGC
Lightweight Grid Computing
National Archives and Records
Administration (US)
LHC
Large Hadron Collider
NaReGi
National Research Grid Initiative
(Japan)
LIBI
Laboratorio Internazionale di
Bioinformatica (Italy)
NAT
Network Address Translation
LoA
Levels of Authentication Assurance
NCeSS
National Centre for e-Social Science
(UK)
NCSA
National Center for
SuperComputing Applications (US)
NDL
Network Description Language
NEESgrid
Software that links earthquake
researchers across the U.S. with
computing resources and research
equipment
NERC
Natural Environment Research
Council (UK)
NERSC
National Energy Research Scientific
Computing Center (US)
An OGF research group
LSF
Load Sharing Facility
Job scheduler software from
Platform
LSG
Life Sciences Grid
An OGF research group
M
MAMS
Meta Access Management System
MDS
Monitoring and Discovery Service
MIB
Management Information Base
NeSC
National e-Science Centre (UK)
MIDCOM
Middlebox Communication
NextGRID
A project to enable a an architecture
for Next Generation Grids which
will enable their widespread use by
research, industry and the ordinary
citizen
An IETF working group
NGS
National Grid Service (UK)
An array of tools and middleware
components to share and manage
data and metadata in Grid and
distributed computing
environments
NHS
National Health Service (UK)
NICE
A provider of software products
aimed at company-wide
management and optimisation of
computing resources
NIST
National Institute of Standards and
Technology (US)
NM
Network Measurements
An IETF working group
MMUSIC
Mobius
Multiparty Multimedia Session
Control
MoU
Memorandum of Understanding
MPI
Message Passing Interface
MSI
Minority Serving Institutions
my
Experiment
A virtual research environment that
allows the sharing of digital items
associated with research,
particularly scientific workflows.
myProxy
mySRB
Page 200
An OGF working group.
NML
Network Markup Language
An OGF working group.
Open source software for managing
security credentials for the X.509
public key infrastructure
NoE
Network of Excellence
NomCom
Nominations Committee (OGF)
A web-based browse and search
interface to the Storage Resource
NorduGrid
A Grid research and development
collaboration by Nordic academic
Glossary
N
O
and research institutes for the ARC
middleware
ns-2
A discrete event simulator for
networking research
NSF
National Science Foundation (US)
NTT
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone
Corp.
O
OASIS
Organization for the Advancement
of Structured Information
Standards
OCSP
Online Certificate Status Protocol
OGC
Open GeoSpatial Consortium
OGC
Collision
A project to make geospatial data
available securely on the UK Grid,
and increase the availability of Grid
resources, collaboratively, with UK
e-infrastructure organisations
OGF
technological infrastructure for the
rapid prototyping and development
of knowledge-intensive, distributed,
open services for the Semantic Grid
OpenID
An open and decentralised identity
system, independent of any
corporation
ORION
Ontario Research and Innovation
Optical Network
OSD
Object based Storage Device
OSG
Open Science Grid
OWL
Web Ontology Language
P
P-Grade
A portal that provides access to the
services supplied by multiple Grids.
P2P
Peer-to-Peer
P2PS
Peer-to-Peer Simplified
Open Grid Forum
PA
Preparation Agreement
Created from the merger of the GGF
and the EGA in 2006.
PBS
Service orientated architecture,
Grid infrastructure software for
cluster and Grid computing
PE
Preservation Environments
OGSA
Open Grid Services Architecture
OGSA
Authz
OGSA Authorisation
OGSA-BES
OGSA Basic Execution Services
Pegasus
A Grid workflow system
An OGF working group.
PEP-CVS
OGSA interface for reading input
and output from a stream of bytes
Policy End Point – Credential
Validation Service
PEP-PDP
Policy End Point – Policy Decision
Point
perfSONAR
Performance Service Oriented
Network Monitoring Architecture
PERMIS
An infrastructure that provides
management of privileges and
authorisation policies and allows
applications to make authorisation
decisions.
PGP
Pretty Good Privacy
PGPGrid
Pepper’s Ghost Productions Grid
OGSAByteIO
An OGF research group
An OGF working group
An OGF working group.
OGSA-D
OGSA Data
An OGF working group.
OGSA-DAI
OGSA-Database Access and
Integration
OGSA-DMI
OGSA Data Movement Interface
An OGF working group.
OGSA-EMS
OGSA Execution Management
Services
OGSA-RSS
OGSA Resource Selection Services
An EPCC project that explores the
use of the Grid for the production of
computer-generated animations
An OGF working group
OGSI
Open Grid Services Infrastructure
OIL
Ontology Inference Language
OMB
Office of Management and Budget
(US)
OMG
Object Management Group
OMII
Open Middleware Infrastructure
Institute (UK and Europe)
OntoGrid
A project to produce the
PGS
Production Grid Services
An OGF research group
PIPSS
PPARC Industrial Programme
Support Scheme
A knowledge transfer scheme that
supports the development of
collaborations between UK
Universities, CERN, ESO, ESA, UK
industry and research sector
organisations
Page 201
Glossary
P
R
Protocol
PhEDEx
Physics Experiment Data Export
PI
Principal Investigator
RTP
Real-time Transport Protocol
PKI
Public Key Infrastructure
RTSP
Real-time Streaming Protocol
PMA
Policy Management Authority
RUS
Resource Usage Service
POSIX
Portable Operating System
Interface – an IEEE standard
family for the API, shell and utilities
interfaces for UNIX-compatible
software
PPARC
Particle Physics and Astronomy
Research Council
Merged with CCLRC to form the
STFC in April 2007
An OGF working group.
S
S-OGSA
Semantic Open Grid Services
Architecture
S/MIME
Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail
Extensions
SAGA
A Simple API for Grid Applications
PRACK
Provisional Response
Acknowledgement
SAML
Security Assertion Markup
Language
PSNC
Poznan Supercomputing and
Network Centre
SARoNGS
Shibboleth and Grid integration
project
Pubcookie
A standalone login server and
modules for common web server
platforms allowing single sign-on
authentication for websites in an
institution.
Q
QoS
Quality of Service
R
A follow-on to ShibGrid and
SHEBANGS
SAW-GEO
Semantically-Aware Workflow
Engines for Geospatial Web Service
Orchestration
SBRN
Scottish Bioninformatics Research
Network
SCUFL
Simple Conceptual Unified Flow
Language
SDI
Spatial Data Infrastructure
SDO
Standards Development
Organisation
RA
Registration Authority
RAL
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
rat
Robust Audio Tool
RG
Research Group
RDF
Resource Description Framework
RDF-S
RDF Schema
RealityGrid
A computing infrastructure for
supporting the modelling of
complex, condensed matter
systems.
SEE-GEO
Secure Access to Geospatial
Services
SeRQL
Sesame RDF Query Language
REST
Representational State Transfer
Sesame
RESTful
A system which uses the principles
of REST
An open source framework for the
storage, inferencing and querying of
RDF data
RFID
Radio Frequency Identification
SGAS
SweGrid Accounting System
RM
Reference Model
SGE
Sun Grid Engine
OGF and IETF are SDOs.
SDP
Session Description Protocol
SDT
Service Description Terms
SecPAL
Security Policy Assertion Language
A MicroSoft project.
An open source, batch-queueing
system
An OGF working group
RMS
Resource Management System
RNS
Resource Namespace Service
RPC
Remote Procedure Call
RTCP
Real-time Transport Control
Page 202
SHEBANGS
Shibboleth Enabled Bridge to
Access the National Grid
Shibboleth
A standards-based, open source,
software package for web single
sign-on across or within
organisational boundaries
Glossary
S
S
A prototype system that allows NGS
users to access NGS facilities
securely through federated
authentication mechanisms
employed at their institutions
STS
Security Token Service
SUMOVER
Support for Mbone
Videoconferencing for the Research
community
Signet
A privilege management toolkit
SVC
Scalable Video Coding
SIMDAT
An EU project to create data Grids
for process and product
development, using numerical
simulation and knowledge
discovery
SweGrid
Sweden’s national computational
resource
SWITCH
Swiss Academic and Research
Network.
ShibGrid
SIP
Session Initiation Protocol
SLA
Service Level Agreement
SLO
Service Level Objective
SN
Storage Networking
An OGF community group.
SNIA
Storage Networking Industry
Association
SOA
Service Oriented Architecture
SOAP
A protocol for exchanging XMlbased messages
SOCKS
A security package that allows a
host behind a firewall to access
resources outside the firewall
SOKU
Service Oriented Knowledge
Utilities
SORMA
T
TAGPMA
The Americas Grid Policy
Management Authority
Taverna
An open source workflow system
TC
Trusted Computing
An OGF research group
TCP
Transmission Control Protocol
TeraGrid
An open, scientific discovery
infrastructure that combines
resources at eleven partner sites to
create an integrated, persistent
computational resource
TFRC
TCP Friendly Rate Control
Theora
An open source, video compression
format
Self Organising ICT Resource
Management
Torque
A project for the the development of
methods and tools for an efficient
market-based allocation of
resources on the Grid
A resource manager that provides
control over batch jobs and
distributed compute nodes
Triana
An open source, problem solving
environment comprised of a visual
interface and data analysis tools.
TrustCoM
An EU project to create an
environment for trust, security and
contract management in B2B
collaborations
SP
Service Provider
SPARQL
SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query
Language
The acronym SPARQL is a recursive
acronym.
Speex
An open source, audio compression
format codec
SPMD
Single Process, Multiple Data
SRB
Storage Resource Broker
SRM
Storage Resource Manager
SSH
Secure Shell
StorM
A Grid Storage Resource Manger
STFC
Science and Technology Facilities
Council
Created from the merger of CCLRC,
PPARC and the nuclear physics
responsiblities previously managed
by EPSRC in April 2007
U
UDAP
Universal Dynamic Activity Package
UDP
User Datagram Protocol
UID
User identifier
UML
Unified Modeling Language
UNICORE
Uniform Interface to Computing
Resources
UNSDI
United Nations Spatial Data
Infrastructure
UPDATE
A SIP method that allows a client to
update the parameters of a session
(such as the set of media streams
and their codecs) but has no impact
on the state of a dialog
Page 203
Glossary
U
W
An OGF research group.
UPM
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
UR
Usage Record
WFMC
Workflow Management Coalition
An OGF research group.
WFS
Web Feature Service
WG
Working Group
WHIP
Workflows Hosted in Portals
project
WLCG
Worldwide LHC Computing Grid
WMProxy
Workload Management Proxy
V
Vine
VIOLA
A modular, extensible Java library
that inherits the GridPortlets’
resources model and generalises it.
Vertically Integrated Optical
testbed for Large Applications
A component for accessing the gLite
WMS
Virtualisation software for running
multiple PC-based operating
systems simultaneously on one
workstation
WMS
VM
Virtual machine
WPS
Web Processing Service
VMWare
Proprietary virtualisation software
WS
Web Services
VO
Virtual Organisation
WS-BPEL
Web Services Business Process
Execution Language
VoIP
Voice over IP
WS-CNP
Web Services Contract Net Protocol
VOMRS
VOM Registration Service
VOMS
Virtual Organisation Membership
Service
WSDAIOnt
Web Services Data Access and
Integration in OntoGrid
WS-DAIR
Vorbis
An open source, professional, audio
encoding and streaming technology
Web Services Data Access and
Integration – Relational Realisation
WS-DAIX
VOTES
Virtual Organisations for Trials and
Epidemiological Studies
Web Services Data Access and
Integration – XML Realisation
WS-GRAM
VPH
Virtual Physiological Human
Web Services Grid Resource
Allocation and Management
VPMan
A project to integrate VOMS and
PERMIS for superior secure Grid
management.
WS-I
Web Services Interoperability
WS-RF
WSRF
Web Services Resource Framework
WS-X
Various Web Services, either
finalised or in progress
WSN
Wireless Sensor Network
WSS
Web Security Service
Virtual PC
VPN
Virtual Private Network
VRVS
Virtual Room Videoconferencing
System
W
WAS
Web Authentication Service
WAYF
Where Are You From
A way for a Service Provider to find
out where to send Shibboleth
requests to get you authenticated
and make a decision on whether
you are allowed to access a resource
Workload Management System
Web Map Service
X
X.501
An ITU-T framework for the X.500
series of standards.
X.509
An ITU-T standard for public key
and privilege management
infrastructures.
WCS
Web Coverage Service
XACML
WebDAV
Web-based Distributed Authoring
and Versioning
eXtensible Access Control Markup
Language
XAM
eXtensible Access Method
Workshop on Enabling
Technologies: Infrastructures for
Collaborative Enterprises
Xen
A hypervisor that is an open source
industry standard for virtualisation
An IEEE event.
XFire
A next-generation JAVA SOAP
stack framework
WETICE
WFM
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Workflow Management
Glossary
X
XLST
XML Stylesheets
XPath
XML Path Language is a language
for selecting nodes from an XML
document. In addition, XPath may
be used to compute values (strings,
numbers, or boolean values) from
the content of an XML document.
XPDL
XML Process Definition Language
XQuery
An XML query language that is
designed to query collections of
XML data
Z
ZRTP
An extension to RTP for
cryptographic key agreement.
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