An EPSRC Funded Project
2003/2004
Department of Computer Science
University College London
The UK OGSA Evaluation Project
Project Aims
The overall aim of the project is to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of OGSA by developing an experimental OGSA-based grid across organizational boundaries.
This aim is refined into the following objectives:
- Establish an experimental OGSA-based Grid for the UK E-Science Community.
- Evaluate GT3 by deploying computational and data intensive OGSA-based E-Science applications across the OGSA-Grid.
- Identify and, if possible, close, gaps in the OGSI specification from a cross-organizational deployment point of view.
- Demonstrate usability improvements of OGSA compared to GT2.
- Derive recommendations for the implementation of a production-version of a UK OGSA-based grid.
- Investigate and demonstrate a migration path from GT2 to OGSA.
- Gain experience with using higher-level grid services (data access and integration, notification, workflow) to inform GGF standardisation of OGSA.
- Investigate interoperability of different versions of the OGSI standard.
Evaluating OGSA across organisational boundaries
The novel focus of this project is to gain insight from software engineering and architectural perspectives of the issues related to deploying OGSA across organisational boundaries. These issues are likely to include:
- Deployment and configuration of grid infrastructure, grid services, and grid applications
- Sheduling and resource allocation decisions
- The delegation of computational workflow
- Security concerns, such as access control, authentication and auditing
- Heterogeneity of grid middleware, schedulers, resource managers, operating systems and hardware
The project aims to address these issues, and experience and theoretical insight will be gained with grid services in respect to deployment and management of grid components, autonomous scheduling, computational workflow, security and heterogeneous deployments in both middleware implementations and underlying platforms.
Project History
The project proposal can be found here.
Partners
- The Department of Computer Science, University College London (UCL)
- The Software Systems Engineering Group is concerned with the development of large and complex software intensive systems. It focuses on: the real-world goals for, services provided by, and constraints on such systems; the precise specification of system structure and behaviour, and the implementation of these specifications. The three key technologies where the group contributes to the state-of-the-art are: databases, distributed objects (particularly middleware and mobile agent technologies), and web infrastructure (particularly XML and related technologies).
- UCL is the coordinating contractor and will provide project management for the project.
- The School of Computing Science, University of Newcastle
- London e-Science Centre, Imperial College
- National e-Science Centre, e-Science Institute, Edinburgh
Project Staff Members
- Dr. Wolfgang Emmerich
- Wolfgang Emmerich is a Reader in Distributed Software Engineering and Head of the Software Systems Engineering Group in the Department of Computer Science at UCL. His research interests are in the principled design of distributed and mobile systems.
- Mr. Paul Brebner
- Paul Brebner is a Research Fellow in the Software Systems Engineering Group at UCL, and is currently on leave from CSIRO ICT Research Centre in Canberra, Australia. His research interests include software architecture and middleware evaluation.
- Dr. Savas Parastatidis
- Savas Parastatidis is a Senior Research Associate at the School of Computing Science, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, and the North-East Regional e-Science Centre, Chief Software Architect.
- Mr. Mark Hewitt
- Mark Hewitt is a Research Assoicate at the School of Computing Science, University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
- Mr. Jake Wu
- Jake Wu is a Research Associate at the School of Computing Science, University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
- Dr. Dave Berry
- Dave Berry is the Research Manager at NeSC. He is tasked with developing a research programme at NeSC, bringing together both industrial and academic research visitors with local researchers. He also leads the Grid Engineering team at NeSC, delivering the NeSC components of the UK e–Science Grid for the UK Grid Engineering Task Force and leading research into open areas of Grid Engineering.
- Mr. Oliver Malham
- Oliver Malham is a Research Associate at NeSC.
- Dr. Steven Newhouse
- Steven Newhouse is the Deputy Director of the Open Middleware Infrastructure Institute (OMII), Highfield Campus, Southampton University, Highfield, Southampton, UK. He has been active in the UK e-Science programme since its inception in 2001 having participated in the Grid Engineering Task Force, Architecture Task Forces, and other activities within the wider programme.
- Mr. David McBride
- David McBride is a Research Associate at LeSC.
Project Progress
17 December 2003 Project launch meeting held via Access Grid with all project participants. 13 January 2004 First of regular project meetings held via Access Grid. 24 September 2004 UK-OGSA Evaluation Project Report 1.0: Evaluation of GT3.2 Installation PDF document (28pp) 15 October 2004 Oxford University Computing Laboratory Talk: "Grid middleware is easy to install, configure, debug and manage - across multiple sites (One can't believe impossible things)" Power Point Document 1 November 2004 University College London, Computer Science Department Seminar: "Grid Middleware - Principles, Practice, and Potential" Power Point Document February 2005 UK0-GSA Evaluation Project Report 2.0: Evaluating OGSA across organisational boundaries PDF Document 27pp) 22 March 2005 Westminster University, UK OGSA Testbed Workshop Presentation by W. Emmerich Power Point Document (5MB) 24 March 2005 UK-OGSA Testbed: Final IGR report Document (10 pp) Resources
A selection of background and input documents and resources. UK-OGSA Project at NeSCForge (project members only).