GOLD
Grid Oriented Lifecycle Development
The UK chemical industry needs to improve its modest $9 – $12
billion share of the $250 billion global markets. Manufacturers
focus on new product development as a means of growth, with
time to market as the primary driver. Analysts state that more
structured mechanisms for managing the innovation process must
emerge if companies are to extract maximum profitability.
Each project a company participates in can be considered to have
its own VO, with a set of members overlapping to varying degrees
with other projects.
Trust Management
A large chemical company may operate hundreds of R&D projects
each with a VO of unique composition. Each VO is a highly
dynamic entity in which members may change frequently in
response to decisions during the course of the project.
An increasing trend to outsource services creates a supply
network of specialist companies interacting with manufacturers.
Such networks effectively collaborate in Virtual Organisations
(VOs).
Since VOs incorporate multiple parties mechanisms are needed
that will guarantee properties such as security and trust.
Three possible perceptions of trust can be defined:
In the GOLD project, Grid middleware will be used as the enabling
technology for dealing with highly dynamic VOs. A set of methods
and tools will be developed to cover:
- Trust between a and b is the belief that b will act reliably and in
a dependable manner
Lifecycle/Workflow Management
Trust Management
Security
Data Persistence
- Trust between a and b is the belief that the resource offered by
b to a adheres to an agreed standard (reliability of resource)
- Trust between a and b is the belief that b will not make
unauthorized use of a’s contribution to the relationship between
them.
Lifecycle Management
Workflow is concerned with the automation of procedures where
documents, information or tasks are passed between participants
according to a defined set of rules to achieve, or contribute to, an
overall business goal. The resulting workflows can be very
complex in structure, containing many temporal and data-flow
dependencies between their constituent applications. However,
constituent applications must be scheduled to run respecting these
dependencies, despite the possibility of intervening processor and
network failures. It should be possible therefore to reconfigure a
workflow dynamically because, for example, machines may fail,
services may be moved or withdrawn and user requirements may
change.
POrder
dispatch
order
Supplier
Purchaser
i
paymentAuthorise
A further element of trust involves contracts. To enable VO
members to fulfill contractual obligations it is necessary to
represent contracts in an electronic manner
o
paymentCapture
E-contractSigned
StartEcontract
EcontractSigned
StartEcontract
f
Wating
for offer
OfferRejected
SendRejected
7dayTimeOut
ε
ε
OfferRcvd
ε
ε
Deciding
to buy
OfferEdited
SendOffer
OfferRejectedRcvd
ε
ε
OfferAcceptedRcvd
EndEcontract
Deal
Deal
This can be achieved through the use of Finite State Machines
(FSM)
ε
Waiting
for results
End
OfferAccepted
SendAccepted, EndEcontract
A simple example of a workflow is shown above. The inputs to the
workflow can be seen on the left hand side, and the outputs that
the workflow will produce can be seen on the right hand side
(either an output or a fault). In this example, four tasks must be
scheduled to execute respecting various inter-task data
dependencies. Such dependencies describe where a task obtains
its input from and thus dictates when a task can be executed.
7dayTimeOut
Editing
offer
End
Such a description can then be subjected to rigorous model
checking
5dayTimeOut
2dayTimeOut
ε
ε
Dispute
A representation of a contract for the purchase of goods using
FSMs is shown to the right
Lifecyle Tools
Lifecyle
Management
Contract
Management
Trust Acquisition
Trust Policy
Enactment
Workflow
Enactment
Workflow Tools
Certification
Tools
Auditing
Audit Tools
Authentication
Security
Administration
Data Access and
Integration
Access Control
Data Update
Notification
Notification Tools
Security
VOs result in cross-organisational boundary interactions, such
service interactions involve requesting and returning information.
These types of interactions require regulation.
This requires attribution, validation and audit of the VO actions:
Attribution – binds an action to the performer
Validation – determines the legality of the action with respect to
the VO agreements
Audit – ensures that evidence is available in case of dispute or
regulatory controls
DAI Tools
Data Provider
Service
Discovery
Service Provider
Org. A
interceptor
interceptor
Org. D
Trusted
Interaction
Space
interceptor
interceptor
Trusted interceptors provide a useful abstraction when
modelling such service interactions.
VO members interact
through these trusted interceptors, which ensure the attribution,
validation and auditing of service interactions.
Data Persistence
Information management is vital for successful project
management. Information tends to be distributed and have different
formats and structures. It may belong to several different
organisations and may have privacy and secrecy issues.
Publication
Find
Semantic Description
Service Registry
Removal
Service Metadata
Modification
QoS
<<Resource>>
OrganizationalStructure
An information notification service is required to provide active
information management. VO participants may register to receive
updates on various topics or pieces of information. Registered
users with necessary access clearance will be informed of changes
in the information subscribed to. In this way, information may be
routed to the people who need it, whether they are aware of its
existence or not.
<<Resource>>
Affiliation
1
hasAffiliates
0..*
<<Resource>>
Person
0..*
+x509DN1:String
1
isAffiliatedTo
+info:VCARD
0..1
1
Domain Dependent Access Services
Chem Eng
contains
Construction
0..*
Organization
Organisation
Notification
Data Models
Relational
XML
RDF
Data Storage (Distributed)
DBMS
DBMS
DBMS
Security
Update
AffiliationEpisode
hasStatus
Naming & Location
Schema Independent Access Services
Query
1..*
0..*
Schema : Gold + Domain
Provenance
epsiodes
+end:DateTime
+start:DateTime
Domain Independent Access Services
Metadata
OrganizationalUnit
0..*
1
AffiliationStatus
People and Organisations
researchInterests
0..*
Annotation.SemanticConcept
Org. B
Org. C