The Grid:
The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Good:

Simulation and Prediction;
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Developing functional software;
Bad:
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Point solution to apps;
Still too hard to use;
Reproducibility, scalability, and usability
Underestimated the technical difficulties;
Not enough of a scientific discipline;
Oversold the grid concept?;


Simulation Tools enable
Systematic Design and Evaluation
Solution in search of a problem;
Ugly:

Gap between hype and reality

GGF
Where are the 'new' areas in tool
development?

Good to have an Informal Survey of
Aps people

Ask roughly 25 grid system developers,
application developers, users, etc.
Computer Scientists vs. Application Users and
the Grid
“Enjoy” complexity
because …
It’s cool
“Hate” complexity
because …
It makes life harder
Computer Scientists vs. Application Users
How can
I make it
faster, better,
cooler, …?
How can
I solve
my scientific
problem?
It’s all about the science
Issues

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Grids and Grid middleware are everywhere
Grid applications are lagging behind, big jump from
prototypes and demonstrations to real production
use of Grids.
Problems:

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
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Interfaces are not simple for scientific application
developers
Missing or immature grid services
Changing environment – Fault rich
Different and evolving interfaces to the “grid”
Application developers accept Grid computing
paradigm only slowly
Questions?

Where should funding be targeted in this
area?

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Is there any funds available?
Perhaps we should prepare a survey for grid
application users on what they want wrt the
tools?
What is the GGF doing?
GPW 2004

Several topics were identified as especially
important for the next workshop. These include:

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How Grid operators make use of performance data
Performance and infrastructure – what are better ways to
build performance hooks into middleware
Performance engineering on the grid – which parameters
have been used in anger
What are the right ways to compare monitoring systems
Where do simulations fit into performance studies
How should “classic data sets” be defined