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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY / JUNE 16, 2003: VOL. 2 NO. 24
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Special Features:
SPACEGRID STUDY ENDS ON AN
OPTIMISTIC NOTE
Almost two years have gone by since ESA set up the SpaceGrid study to see
how
the emerging use of the electronic grid could increase and improve the use of
space applications. The study is now complete and last week members met with
representatives of industry and academia to discuss the outcome.
So what is the Grid?
To paraphrase Ian Foster, an early mentor of grid computing for research,
"Grid computing is the large-scale integration of computer systems, via high-
speed networks, to provide on-demand access to data-crunching capabilities not
available to one individual or group of machines". For instance, young value-
added companies or private individuals with limited computer capacity can
select heavy files, such as Earth observation images and data, and then give
instructions for these to be processed in order to receive crop yield
estimates. Once the processing is complete, the relatively 'light' files with
the results can be sent to their computer for further use. The benefits -- in
terms of time, money and resources -- are clear.
Other benefits include the possibility of setting up 'virtual
organisations'
for research and study; that is, a group of scientists and technicians can
work in different organisations in different countries but share information
and data.
Where's the Grid going?
Participants at the workshop do not need to be convinced about the benefits
of
the Grid. As representatives of academia, space institutes, the information
and space industries, and the European Commission, they all have an active
interest in grid projects.
The general consensus among participants is that the Grid – seen as the
next
step up from the internet and the world wide web - will bring many benefits to
both research and industry. To quote Giacomo Cavallo, head of the ESA Grid
Interest Group "Basically the Grid is the only evolutionary path we have in
front of us beyond Internet, and we had better follow it." However, as Cavallo
pointed out at the workshop "we are still at the beginning of Grid
technology".
The SpaceGrid study show that a number of concerns need to be addressed
before
the Grid comes 'of age', concerns echoed by many of the participants in their
presentations. These can be summed up as the need for:
- standardisation of grid language and codes high performing middleware –
the
Grid term for software
- further research into grid systems
- improved Grid interoperability and interoperability with other accessible
web services
- improved network connection speed across data centres, computing
facilities
and users
- a safe grid environment, encompassing grid-compatible firewalls and
security
- a legal framework enabling the exploitation of Grid resources
- guaranteed quality of services
- education and outreach
According to Max Lemke of the European Commission, other challenges facing
the
whole of the Grid community are "the need to move from research applications
to applications for industry and business, to work with industry and
technology providers, to think ahead to see what technology will be needed to
get added value for industry and to have prototypes to check the feasibility
of developments".
As Wyn Cudlip of QinetiQ, a leading UK science consultancy company, who
represented the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites pointed out at the
workshop: "scientific institutes are research oriented and happy to use
systems in the development stage, industry however is more reluctant to make a
big investment unless they can clearly see the advantages and a guaranteed
return".
Space related applications, as presented by the various contributors at the
workshop, represent interesting challenges for the utilisation and further
development of Grid-related technologies. These applications should be
considered as very good cases for further funding at European level.
What next for ESA
Now the study has been completed, ESA's next step is to pass from the study
phase to implementation of real applications in domains for which the
SpaceGrid study has demonstrated that the Grid could be better exploited,
namely Earth observation, solar science, teletesting, and telemonitoring for
spacecraft engineering and concurrent design.
In Europe, Earth observation and solar science communities are good
examples
of multi-institutional or even multi-enterprise endeavours. In addition, their
computing, archiving and also human resources, in the case of Earth
observation ground segments, are geographically distributed. The demand for a
better approach to distributed resource exploitation and application
management is therefore high.
The objective of the proposed follow-on work is to demonstrate that Open
Grid
Service Infrastructure (OGSI) technology can provide the basis for a
distributed middleware for Earth observation and solar science by distributing
access to metadata, catalogues, inventories and archival data, and providing
on demand data processing via distributed services.
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