The Physiology of the Grid An Open Grid Services Architecture for Distributed Systems Integration

TLDR

Integration of services across distributed, heterogeneous virtual organizations is technically challenging due to differing native platforms and required quality of service. The paper proposes an Open Grid Services Architecture to overcome these integration challenges. The architecture defines a uniform Grid service semantics, mechanisms for creating, naming, discovering transient instances, providing location transparency and multiple protocol bindings, and supports WSDL‑based interfaces for lifetime, change, and notification management, as well as reliable invocation, authentication, authorization, and delegation. This draft document, continuously revised, is available at http://www.globus.org/research/papers/ogsa.pdf and can be commented on via [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail], and [e-mail].

Abstract

In both e-business and e-science, we often need to integrate services across distributed, heterogeneous, dynamic “virtual organizations” formed from the disparate resources within a single enterprise and/or from external resource sharing and service provider relationships. This integration can be technically challenging because of the need to achieve various qualities of service when running on top of different native platforms. We present an Open Grid Services Architecture that addresses these challenges. Building on concepts and technologies from the Grid and Web services communities, this architecture defines a uniform exposed service semantics (the Grid service); defines standard mechanisms for creating, naming, and discovering transient Grid service instances; provides location transparency and multiple protocol bindings for service instances; and supports integration with underlying native platform facilities. The Open Grid Services Architecture also defines, in terms of Web Services Description Language (WSDL) interfaces and associated conventions, mechanisms required for creating and composing sophisticated distributed systems, including lifetime management, change management, and notification. Service bindings can support reliable invocation, authentication, authorization, and delegation, if required. Our presentation complements an earlier foundational article, “The Anatomy of the Grid,” by describing how Grid mechanisms can implement a service-oriented architecture, explaining how Grid functionality can be incorporated into a Web services framework, and illustrating how our architecture can be applied within commercial computing as a basis for distributed system integration—within and across organizational domains. This is a DRAFT document and continues to be revised. The latest version can be found at http://www.globus.org/research/papers/ogsa.pdf. Please send comments to [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail] Physiology of the Grid 2