The meeting about the future of grid infrastructure focused on the new
S-Resource Framework (WSRF) proposals.
It was arranged by the eScience Institute and hosted by the London e-Science Centre at Imperial
College.
Over 100 people attended the meeting and many more engaged
via Access Grid. Steve Tuecke, is chief architect of Globus, led the
development of the Open Grid Services Infrastructure standards proposal
and has been engaged in the development of WSRF. His talk identified
the conceptual model and value of these emerging standards proposals.
The highlights included: unbundling the OGSI functionality into six
complementary proposals; a model that matched the ideals of web service
architectures
and
therefore
better
synergy
with
industry,
and
simplifications that are expected to work well with existing web
service standards and tools. WSRF supports a common distributed system
design pattern and will be significant in enabling large systems to be
built by multiple enterprises.
The panel was: Prof. Peter Henderson, Technical Director, OMII,
Southampton; Dr Andrew Herbert, Director of Microsoft Research,
Cambridge; Prof. Tony Hey, Director of the UK e-Science Core Programme;
Dr Savas Parastatidis, NEReSC Technical Director, Newcastle; Dr David
Snelling, Fujitsu Europe Ltd, Hayes Dr Paul Vickers, HP Research Labs,
Bristol.
The panellists welcomed the steps represented by WSRF but recognised
that further development would occur as WSRF moved from intensive
development by IBM and Globus to wider input.
There was a vigorous
supply of questions from the floor which mainly focused on the way WSRF
would develop, the scale of the change from OGSI, the impact on Globus
schedules and the impact on UK e-Science projects. Tony Hey concluded
the meeting, stating that "From 10,000 feet, WSRF are several steps in
the right direction" and thanking all who had contributed.
We
celebrated the success with bubbly.
Malcolm