Re: Testbed

[Chip Watson <chip.watson@jlab.org>]

Ian wrote:

> ...  Basically, GRAM (say) is an interoperability protocol.

Or is it a library which encapsulates a protocol?  Is the wire protocol defined
(web link to definition?), and is it easy to integrate into another system?

> To put things another way, Chip says "a homogeneous Globus GCE testbed does
> not test anything which is not already known to work" [and by definition is
> presumably not useful].

Not at all. I'm acknowledging its usefulness, but believe that there is functionality
which Globus does not address.

> I think the whole point is that by adopting a
> homogeneous Globus GCE testbed, we can ignore a [relatively small and
> mundane] set of problems that have been solved, and go on to work on other
> more interesting and critical problems: like how to build schedulers, or do
> data replication, or how we represent policy, etc., etc.

Agree to second half, but perhaps put some things into that scope which you
would not.  In particular, I think web services are part of our future, leveraging
the huge investment being made there by Microsoft, IBM, Sun and many others.
Should grid forum do something analogous to ebXML?  I find the possibility
interesting...

--
Chip Watson
High Performance Computing Group
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility
Tel: (757) 269-7101
http://www.jlab.org/~watson