Glossary | Windows Vista(TM) Plain & Simple (Bpg-Plain & Simple)

Apache AXIS: An implementation of the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) specification. It defines a core technology framework to build SOAP message enveloping and transport of messages.

Autonomic Computing: A computing environment with the ability to manage itself and dynamically adapt to change in accordance with business policies and objectives. Self-managing environments can perform such activities based on situations they observe or sense in the IT environment rather than requiring IT professionals to initiate the task. These environments are self-configuring , self-healing, self-optimizing , and self-protecting .

Business On Demand: An enterprise whose business processes ”integrated end-to-end across the company and with key partners , suppliers, and customers ”can respond with flexibility and speed to any customer demand, market opportunity, or external threat.

Business Web: Collections of businesses that dynamically come together on the Internet in unique ways to sell new products and services, build new channels, and create new business models.

Common Information Model ( CIM ): Describes management information and offers a framework for managing the system elements across distributed systems.

Common Management Model ( CMM ): Defines a set of common management functions for managing the resource in a grid. CMM is an abstract representation of real IT resources such as disk, file systems, operating systems, network ports, and IP addresses. CMM defines a set of common management interfaces by which these manageable resources are exposed to external management applications for the purpose of managing these resources.

Computational Grid: An infrastructure framework that provides dependable, consistent, pervasive, and inexpensive access to high-end computational capabilities including compute power, hardware, and software.

Data Grid: Deals with all aspects of grid data including data location, transfer, access, management, and security.

Distributed Computing: A method of computing in which very large problems are divided into small tasks that are distributed across a computer network for simultaneous processing. Individual results are then brought together to form the total solution.

e-Business: (1) An organization that connects its core business systems to key constituencies using intranets , extranets, and the Web; (2) The process of building and enhancing business relationships through the thoughtful use of network-based technologies; (3) The leveraging of Internet technologies to transact and interact with customers, suppliers, partners, and employees in order to achieve and sustain competitive advantage.

e-Business Infrastructure: The products and services one needs to build or run e-business applications. It is made up of the hardware, software, connectivity, and services needed to plan, build, and maintain a highly scalable, secure, adaptable, reliable, available, and manageable environment to support multiple applications to meet the e-business needs of organizations with both traditional and Web-based models. "Applications" or "solutions" themselves are specifically excluded from the e-business infrastructure definition since they utilize the infrastructure but are not part of it. Five elements are included in an e-business infrastructure: Web application servers, directory and security servers, edge servers, data and transaction servers, and storage systems.

Evolution of the Internet: Initially, the Internet provided a means for networking individuals and enabling electronic communication. Then the Internet became a source for sharing information on a global scale as the World Wide Web evolved. In the next decade , IBM views the Internet as the computing platform enabling dynamic e-business.

Generic Security Service Application Program Interface ( GSS API ): Defined in IETF RFC-1508. GSS-API provides a way for applications to protect data that is sent to peer applications. This might be from a client on one machine to a server on another. The current Globus Grid toolkit uses GSS API for security programming.

Global XML Architecture: Builds on current XML Web services baseline specifications of SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI. This architecture is a design-based principle of creating modular, integrateable, general-purpose, and open standard architecture solutions for Web services.

Grid Computing: A kind of distributed computing over a network (public or private) based on the principle of virtualization of computing and data resources such as processing, network bandwidth, and storage capacity to provide seamless access to vast IT capabilities. At its core, grid computing is based on an open set of standards (e.g., OGSA) and protocols that enable communication across heterogeneous, geographically dispersed environments.

Grid Job Scheduler: Responsible for the management of jobs such as allocating resources needed for a specific job, partitioning jobs to schedule parallel execution, data management, and service-level management.

Grid Resource Allocation Manager ( GRAM ): A Globus-provided resource manager. GRAM provides a set of standard interfaces and components to collectively manage a job task and to provide resource information including job status and resource configuration. This information can be used for resource allocation for a specific job.

Grid Resource Brokers: Provides matchmaking services between service requester and service provider. This matchmaking enables the selection of best available resources from the service provider for the execution of a specific task.

Grid Security Infrastructure ( GSI ): Based on public key encryption, X.509 certificates, and the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) communication protocol. Extensions to these standards have been added for single sign-on and delegation. The Globus toolkit uses GSI for enabling secure authentication and communication for participants in the grid.

GWSDL: Description language for grid services modeled after WSDL, trying to overcome some of WSDL 1.1's drawbacks on inheritance and open content extensibilities.

Index Service: A Globus-provided high-level service responsible for managing static and dynamic state data for grids.

Model-Driven Architecture: A platform-independent modeling architecture for building interoperable solutions buildup on standards such as Universal Modeling Language (UML) and Meta-Object Facility (MOF). This is the core architecture for future computing and driven by the Open Management Group.

.NET Framework: A framework and tool set to develop Common Language Runtime (CLR) solutions and XML Web services.

On Demand Operating Environment: The new computing architecture initiative from IBM designed to help companies realize the benefits of Business On Demand. The On Demand operating environment exhibits the four essential characteristics: it is integrated, open, virtualized, and autonomic.

On Demand Operating Infrastructure: Defines a set of core components and solutions to meet the On Demand operation environment characteristics.

Ontology: Used to describe collections of information like concepts and relationships that can exist between resources and objects. This taxonomy defines classes of objects and relations among them.

Open Grid Service Architecture ( OGSA ): Open standards architecture for next-generation grid services to enable the creation, maintenance, and integration of grid services maintained by virtual organizations.

Open Grid Service Infrastructure ( OGSI ): A core component of the OGSA, which provides a uniform way to describe grid services and defines a common pattern of behavior for all grid services. In short, this architecture defines grid service behaviors, service description mechanisms, and protocol binding information by using Web services as the technology enabler .

Peer-to-Peer Computing: The sharing of computer resources and services by direct exchange between systems. These resources and services include the exchange of information, processing cycles, cache storage, and disk storage for files. Peer-to-peer computing takes advantage of existing desktop computing power and networking connectivity, allowing economical clients to leverage their collective power to benefit the entire enterprise.

Resource Description Framework Language ( RDF ): A standard for the notation of structured information, recommended by the W3 Consortium for meta-data interoperability across different resource description communities.

Resource Specification Language ( RSL ): A Globus Grid Toolkit “defined XML standard for describing a job.

Semantic Web: The next-generation Web in which information is given well-defined meaning and computers and people are better enabled to work in cooperation. This enables the data on the Web to be defined and linked together for computing agents for automatic decision making.

Service-Level Agreements ( SLA ): An agreement between a service provider and service requester to provide certain quality of service guarantees .

Service-Oriented Architecture ( SOA ): The architecture to define loosely coupled and interoperable services/applications and to define a process for integrating these interoperable components. In SOA, the software system is decomposed into a collection of network-connected components/services and applications are composed dynamically from the deployed and available components in the network.

Simple Object Access Protocol ( SOAP ): Provides the definition of the XML-based information, which can be used for exchanging structured and typed information between peers in a decentralized, distributed environment. This includes message packaging and message exchanges scenarios.

Software Architecture: An abstraction of the runtime elements of a software system during some phase of its operation. A system may be composed of many levels of abstraction and many phases of operation, each with its own software architecture. [Fielding]

Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration of Web Services ( UDDI ): The building block that will enable business to quickly, easily, and dynamically find businesses and transact with each other. This is based on open standard UDDI specifications that provide seamless interoperability and integration capabilities. There are many directory services, both Internet/intranet, based on UDDI, which can be treated as global registries for Web services.

Universal Modeling Language: Modeling is the process of designing software applications. UML provides a standard and industry-driven methodology for software modeling. This modeling language is defined by the Open Management Group and is not limited to software and can also form the basis for designing non-software systems.

Utility Computing: The network delivery of information technology and business process services by utility computing providers.

Virtual Organizations: Coordinated resource sharing and problem solving in dynamic, multi-institutional organizations. Sharing is with direct access to computers, software, data, and other resources by a range of collaborative problem-solving and resource-brokering strategies. The sharing is controlled with resource providers and consumers defining what is shared, who is allowed to share, and the conditions under which sharing occurs. The set of individuals and/or institutions defined by the sharing rules form the virtual organization.

Web Services: A software system identified by a URI, whose public interfaces and bindings are defined and described using XML. Its definition can be discovered by other software systems. These systems may then interact with the Web service in a manner prescribed by its definition, using XML-based messages conveyed by Internet protocols.

Web Services Architecture ( WSA ): Provides a common definition for Web services. This is a standard initiative from W3C. WSA is trying to define and relate the necessary technologies (XML, SOAP, and WSDL) to construct interoperable Web services. It will define how to construct interoperable messages, message exchange patterns, enveloping mechanisms, and a definition mechanism for interoperable services. In addition, WSA will define the manageability, security, and correlation aspects of Web services.

Web Service Description Language ( WSDL ): An XML language for describing Web services. This language provides a model and XML format. WSDL provides facilities for service developers to separate abstract definitions of the service (interface, message, and schema definitions) from concrete definitions (service, port, and binding definitions).

Websphere Application Server ( WAS ): A J2EE/J2SE-built application server framework from IBM. It provides reliable, high-volume transactions for customers. It forms the basis for the IBM On Demand infrastructure framework with built-in support for Web services and OGSA-based grid services.