developerWorks: Design an Application for Grid

“Let’s start by differentiating a grid application from a grid
service. The latter, under development for a couple of years,
includes useful functions based on the Open Grid Services
Architecture (OGSA). Currently, the Open Grid Services
Infrastructure (OGSI) provides specifications for query,
monitoring, discovery, factory, notification, security,
registration, management, scheduling, and other functions that can
be made available to all grid users. A grid application can use
these registered services, along with grid infrastructure, to
accomplish specific work-related tasks that solve business and
technical problems. Basically, a grid application is a collection
of work items or jobs that carry out a complex computing task by
using grid resources. It usually remains private and largely under
the developer’s control.

“Because a grid may be large, dispersed, and heterogeneous,
designing a grid application can present a challenge. While a
non-grid application runs in a relatively stable, well-defined, and
often dedicated environment, a grid-enabled application runs in a
dynamic, sometimes loosely defined, and heavily networked
environment. As the Redbook “Enabling applications for grid
computing with Globus” explains, there are almost three dozen
architectural and environmental elements to consider in designing
or enabling a grid application. In this article, I provide an
introduction to the Redbook and an overview of the considerations
related to the jobs, the data, and the environment of a grid
application…”

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