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The North-East Regional e-Science Centre is involved in a large number of
research projects that rely on the design and development of a Grid-based
infrastructure. Building a large number of different infrastructures would
be time-consuming, difficult and risky; currently available Grid middleware
is relatively immature and subject to frequent change, while the knowledge
and experience of
it among e-Science researchers is understandably very limited. A
further problem is that many e-Science projects—both at Newcastle
and elsewhere—are currently based on Web Services, but there is the
intention to move to Grid Services at some point in the future. The
method of making the transition is not yet clear, and nor is the
extent of the extra work, delays and risks that this will introduce
into projects. Consequently, it was decided to analyse the
requirements of all the Newcastle projects and to de-sign and build
a common Core Grid Middleware. The core will consist of an
interoperable set of Grid Services. Each project can adopt the Core
Grid Middleware and build its own application-specific services on
top of it. This should reduce development effort, time and risk. |
