Thursday, April 26, 2007

Grid-Enablement Software

Three days in San Diego attending a Globus 4 Toolkit Tutorial and Workshop got me thinking more about the potential of grid commuting emerging on the scene sooner rather than later. Sure, I've run a few multi-participant sessions on the Access Grid to attend conferences or connect with lab collaborators, but I hadn't thought much about how a certificate-based access point might be my key to the all the worlds computers some day. We've been developing some SOAP-based Web services to connect disparate systems by binding to various programming languages. We've been using WSDL and WSDD to identify and deploy them. But, I hadn't thought through how every programming task on every computer in the world could be accessed through a unified front based on those specifications. Nor did I expect the Globus 4 Toolkit to be based on such underlying components.

No doubt sitting at command central of such a grid-enabled empire could be quite a rush. What a potential for visualization... virtual communities, virtual organizations, virtual identities, load balancing statistics, and job control procedures lighting up one step then the next. No wonder why so much of the workshop revolved around security methods for protecting one's assets while connecting them for others to use. Some fourth entry links:

globus 4 toolkit: news page
access grid: home page
soap primer: version 1.2
wsdl:web services description language
wsdd:web services deployment descriptor

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