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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY / JULY 7, 2003: VOL. 2 NO. 27
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Special Features:
GLOBUS TOOLKIT 3.0 RELEASED FOR
GRID SERVICES ARCHITECTURE
Today's official release of the Globus Toolkit 3.0 (GT3) is a milestone in
the evolution of Grid computing, which lets people share computing power,
databases, and other tools securely online across corporate, institutional,
and geographic boundaries without sacrificing local autonomy. GT3 is the
first full-scale implementation of the Open Grid Services Infrastructure
(OGSI) version 1.0, a new specification that the Globus Project played a key
role in defining.
Previous versions of the Globus Toolkit have become central to hundreds of
science and engineering projects on the Grid, and GT has been adopted for
commercial offerings by major information technology companies. The toolkit's
open-source software and services have transformed the way on-line resources
are shared across organizations.
OGSI is part of the Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA) developed
through
the Global Grid Forum (GGF) to define Grid services, which are Web services
that conform to a specific set of conventions. OGSI specifies a set of
"service primitives" that -- rather than stipulating precise services --
instead establish a nucleus of behavior common to all Grid/Web services that
can be leveraged by meta- and system-level services. GT3 uses this
specification to provide powerful tools for resource monitoring, discovery,
management, security and file transfer.
"We hope this will be remembered as the day Grid computing began to come of
age," said Ian Foster, associate division director for mathematics and
computer science at Argonne National Laboratory and professor of computer
science at the University of Chicago. "GT3 is significant because it shows
how OGSI can be used to implement Grid services for real-world applications
using standard Web services tooling. The community of developers is expanding
rapidly thanks to these standards, with useful new tools emerging from
research in the public and private sectors. We believe GT3 provides the
foundation for many new Grid applications."
Foster is co-leader of the Globus Project with colleagues Carl Kesselman
(research associate professor of computer science at the University of
Southern California School of Engineering and director of the USC Information
Sciences Institute's Center for Grid Technologies) and Steve Tuecke (lead
architect of the Globus Project at Argonne's Distributed Systems
Laboratory).
GT3 is fully compliant with OGSI v1.0, which recently completed its public
comment period. The v1.0 specification is now an official GGF "Proposed
Recommendation," meaning it will not change from this point forward.
Partners of the Globus Project include the UK e-Science Program and
Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory, both of which contributed to development of GT3.
IBM and Platform Computing are also providing code for GT3. This combination
of open source and open standards with industrial investment is spurring broad
adoption by users seeking to share resources seamlessly across distributed
organizations.
Globus Project sponsors include the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the
National Science Foundation (NSF), NASA, the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency (DARPA), IBM and Microsoft. "The Globus Toolkit is an
important technology transfer success," said Mary Anne Scott, program manager
in the DOE Advanced Scientific Computing Research Office (ASCR). "ASCR
originally funded this software development as fundamental research into
information technology. The project continues to grow by incorporating
support from additional funding sources in the public and private sectors,
while promoting open standards that are good for users whether they work in
research labs or in the business world."
Leading Grid participants have previously committed to use of GT3 and OGSA.
Companies include Avaki, Cray, Entropia, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Oracle,
Platform Computing, Silicon Graphics, Inc., Sun Microsystems, and Veridian.
Research projects include FusionGrid, TeraGrid, the Department of Energy
Science Grid, the Grid Physics Network (GriPhyN), the Network for Earthquake
Engineering Simulation, the International Virtual Data Grid Laboratory, and
the NSF Middleware Initiative. A collection of quotes about GT3 by these
partners is at
www.globus.org/about/news/prGT3quotes.html.
"The Internet is about getting computers to talk together; Grid computing is
about getting computers to work together," said Tom Hawk, IBM's general
manager of Grid computing. "The introduction of the Globus Toolkit 3.0 with
the Open Grid Services Architecture is an important step in moving Grid
computing beyond the laboratories of academia and research and through the
doors of commercial enterprises. Grid will help elevate the Internet to a
true computing platform, combining the qualities of service of enterprise
computing with the ability to share heterogeneous distributed resources --
everything from applications, data, storage and servers."
The Globus Project is based at Argonne, the University of Southern
California's Information Sciences Institute, and the University of Chicago.
The Globus Toolkit has been hailed as one of the top recent technical
innovations. It received a 2002 R&D 100 Award from R&D Magazine, which
further honored the toolkit as 2002's "Most Promising New Technology."
InfoWorld magazine just named the project's leaders among its top ten
Innovators 2003, and the Federal Laboratory Consortium gave the Globus Project
its 2003 Award for Excellence in Technology Transfer.
To download GT3, see: www.globus.org/toolkit/.
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