Part 4: The Grid Computing Technological Viewpoints

     

In today's world of high technology achievements, there are none more impressive than the global movement into Grid Computing. Grid Computing accomplishments can now prove to be able to present a virtual computing environment that appears to be more powerful, and sustain more processing power, than the world's largest computer.

In Part 4, we explore the vast number of complex technologies that comprise the realm of Grid Computing. We describe exactly how, through specific combinatorial designs, the world is able to leverage these innovative solutions to assist in the resolution of some of the most difficult, computation- intensive problem-solving activities.

Also in this part of the book, full treatment will be provided to allow the reader to better understand how to achieve "true" distributed resource sharing across heterogeneous and dynamic "virtual organizations." Grid Computing technologies require several improvements in alignment with many of the traditional computing technologies.

In the early days of Grid Computing, a number of custom middleware solutions were created to solve the "grid problem" (as we defined the so-called "grid problem" in earlier parts of the book). However, this resulted in noninteroperable solutions, while at the same time, integration among the participants became a challenging experience. As we have also discussed earlier, the third wave of the Grid Computing era is now focusing on the easier integration, security, and quality of control aspects of resource sharing.

Foster, Kesselman, Nick, and Tuecke describe the Open Grid Service Architecture ( OGSA ) as a solution to the above problem. This architectural concept is a result of the alignment of existing grid standards with the emerging service-oriented architecture as well as the Web. The Web service standards define an open standard mechanism for service creation, service naming, and service discovery. It provides an interoperable message exchange pattern between client and service by using XML as the message format. The OGSA defines standard message formats and message exchange patterns for Grid Computing.

This standardization of messages and exchange patterns enables interoperability among grid services. Also, this eliminates the need to worry about the underlying operating system where the IT resources are hosted, and/or transport level networking services, and/or protocols used for message exchange. These are treated as the fundamental runtime binding issues.

The OGSA 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 . The architecture thus developed uses the best features from both the grid and Web services community.

The core technologies that forms the basis of OGSA are:

  • eXtensible Markup Language (XML). This markup language is used to define the message exchange format and structure.

  • Web Service Description Language (WSDL). This is a service description language for Web services; the same is used for describing grid services.

The companion technologies that are of interest for our discussion are:

  • Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). This is a standard-based message enveloping mechanism. In addition to this message format, it defines a set of standard message exchange patterns.

  • Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI). A standard and interoperable platform that enables companies and applications to quickly, easily, and dynamically find and use Web services over the Internet.

Refer to the last chapter for a detailed discussion on these technologies. These core technologies are the basic building blocks for the Open Grid Service Infrastructure ( OGSI ) that forms the base layer of the grid service architecture. In the opening two chapters we explore details of the OGSA and the platform components including the OGSI specification.



Grid Computing (IBM Press On Demand Series)
Windows Vista(TM) Plain & Simple (Bpg-Plain & Simple)
ISBN: 131456601
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2002
Pages: 118

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