Accelerating business innovation; a Technology Strategy Board programme The Standards Landscape Dave Berry Standards for Interoperable Grids: Experience from NextGRID and OMII-Europe 17 th March 2008

Accelerating business innovation; a Technology Strategy Board programme Contents Standards and “Standards Defining Organisations” Context: Competing organisations co-operating The grid standards landscape Some of the relevant organisations and standards The nice thing about standards is, there are so many to choose from

Accelerating business innovation; a Technology Strategy Board programme Why Standards? Interoperability of protocols Portability of programs Vendor p.o.v. Ideal is a de facto monopoly, e.g. MS Office Network effects give more market share to market leaders User p.o.v. (IT Managers, Developers, …) Ideal is a number of competing products But need to share with other users Interoperability and portability are orthogonal and complementary

Accelerating business innovation; a Technology Strategy Board programme When is a Standard not a Standard? When there is only one (real) implementation I.e. created by a vendor to legitimize their product Some accuse Office OpenXML of this When nobody uses it I.e., created by a committee with no user demand Some wonder whether WS-Naming fits this description When it is not the product of a Standards Defining Organisation I.e. de facto standards All these factors may change Other vendors may implement it (is this happening with OpenXML?) People may start to use it (is this happening with WS-Naming?) An SDO may define it

Accelerating business innovation; a Technology Strategy Board programme Standards Defining Organisations (SDOs) National ISO (BSI, ANSI, …), ETSI ISO is the international standards body formed from a membership of national organisations Industry OASIS, SNIA, DMTF, ITU, ECMA, IETF, … Community W3C, OGF, … Subject-specific IVOA, many more!

Accelerating business innovation; a Technology Strategy Board programme Who actually makes standards? Interested parties Vendors, users, … SDOs provide support, procedures, publication, etc. Companies & organisations that work together, standardise together The result is competing groups and informal alliances Membership of these alliances shifts from one standard to another, depending on the goals of each organisation Sometimes this results in competing “standards” E.g. WS-Resource Framework IBM, HP, Fujitsu, CA, BEA, … Vs. WS-Management MS, Sun, Intel, Oracle, …

Accelerating business innovation; a Technology Strategy Board programme An example of competing standards URL / URI / IRI A single string Easily pasted into scripts and documents Ubiquitous WS-Addressing Augments URI with messaging information and metadata Assumes tooling available (or hand-write the XML) Supported by many web tools -In theory, these are complementary standards -In practice, many people just use URIs -Part of a larger competition: REST vs. SOAP

Accelerating business innovation; a Technology Strategy Board programme The SOAP / WS stack A (large) set of standards that can be combined to implement a comprehensive infrastructure Examples WS-Addressing WS-Security WS-Eventing WS-Policy WS-Transaction

Accelerating business innovation; a Technology Strategy Board programme An example of competing WS standards WS-Resource Framework & WS-Notification IBM, HP, Fujitsu, CA, BEA, … Replaced OGSI WS-Management & WS-Eventing MS, Sun, Intel, Oracle, … Evolved from WS-Transfer This conflict was eventually resolved by the release of the WS-Resource Transfer specification

Accelerating business innovation; a Technology Strategy Board programme The effort required for standardisation A typical working group or technical committee meets Weekly by telephone Face to face every 2-3 months Time required to write, review and revise the documents Outreach Presentations, tutorials, joint meetings, …

Accelerating business innovation; a Technology Strategy Board programme The grid standards landscape Current status Primarily single-source systems competing for market share E.g. Condor, Platform, Google, Globus E.g. Finance industry Initially secretive about use of grid Now users seeking to break out of vendor lock-in Some Academic Collaboration E.g. EGEE and OSG

Accelerating business innovation; a Technology Strategy Board programme The Grid Environment

Accelerating business innovation; a Technology Strategy Board programme W3C is an international consortium where member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards. Founded in 1994, ~80 published recommendations, staff on 3 continents Members of W3C range from l eading technology companies to non-profit organisations and individuals. Best known for fundamental web standards, including: XML XML Schema XHTML XSL/XSLT MathML SSML CCS OWL Several working groups are relevant to grid standards projects including: WS- Addressing WSDL 2.0 MTOM W3C: World-Wide Web Consortium

Accelerating business innovation; a Technology Strategy Board programme DMTF is an industry organization leading the development of management standards and integration technology. Founded in 1992 Best known for standards that address system management in enterprise and Internet environments, including: CIM WBEM DMI The DMTF and OGF are formally collaborating on extensions to CIM that support the management of grid infrastructures. DMTF: Distributed Management Task Force

Accelerating business innovation; a Technology Strategy Board programme OASIS is a member-led, international nonprofit standards consortium concentrating on structured information and global e-business standards Founded in 1993, ~65 projects, staff on 3 continents Members of OASIS are Vendors, users, academics and governments Organizations, individuals and industry groups Best known for e-business standards that address real world business requirements, including: UDDI SAML ebXML WS-Security WSRP WS-Reliability SPML XACML UBL Host for key grid standards projects including: WSDM WS Resource Transfer WS-Eventing OASIS: Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards

Accelerating business innovation; a Technology Strategy Board programme ETSI: European Technology Standards Institute ETSI is a member-led, international nonprofit standards consortium of the telecoms industry. It is officially responsible for the standardisation of ICT in Europe. Founded in 1988 Best known for GSM and TETRA The ETSI Grid group has commisioned “plug tests” of grid implementations and is looking to produce detailed tests for existing standards. It is also making links between the grid community and telecommunications standards.

Accelerating business innovation; a Technology Strategy Board programme OGF: Open Grid Forum OGF is an international community leading the global standardization effort for grid computing. Formed in 2006 from the merger of the Global Grid Forum( founded 2000) and the Enterprise Grid Alliance (founded 2004) Members include users, developers, and vendors. Industry, academics, research laboratories Best known for standards and architectures for Grids, including: OGSA SAGA ByteIO GridFTP GLUE DRMAA JSDL SRM RNS/Naming Also produces profile documents such as: Basic Security Profile HPC Basic Profile Secure Addressing Profile Secure Communication Profile

Accelerating business innovation; a Technology Strategy Board programme OGSA WSRF Basic Profile v1.0 OGSA needs a stable Web Services infrastructure… …but it is a design objective that OGSA be infrastructure agnostic Hence WSRF basic profile for OGSA There could be other basic profiles for OGSA Normative reference specifications WS-I Basic profile 1.1 & Basic security profile 1.0 WS-addressing WS Resource Framework & WS Notification WS-security When WS Resource Transfer is available, OGSA might release a new Basic Profile

Accelerating business innovation; a Technology Strategy Board programme OGF Specifications OGSA: Open Grid Services Architecture, which includes JSDL: Job Submission Description Language BES: Basic Execution Service RSS: Resource Selection Service ByteIO: POSIX-like IO WS-DAI: Data Access and Integration RNS: Resource Namespace Service WS-Naming: Abstract Names DMI: Data Movement Interface SAGA: Simple API for Grid Applications DRMAA: Distributed Resource Management Application API

Accelerating business innovation; a Technology Strategy Board programme Standard APIs vs Protocols Workload Manager Client Workload Manager Native API Native Protocol Engine proprietary API proprietary protocol Native Protocol Engine DRMAA/SAGA Native API proprietary protocol standard API OGSA-BES WS-I compliant SOAP toolkit standard protocol OGSA-BES WS-I compliant SOAP toolkit DRMAA/SAGA standard protocol standard API OGSA-BES WS-I compliant SOAP toolkit standard protocol proprietary API Native API From Building Blocks for the Grid, Chris Smith, eScience2007

Accelerating business innovation; a Technology Strategy Board programme Further reading A snapshot of standards from DMTF, W3C, SNIA, OGF, OASIS, IETF, ITU and others can be seen at Chris Smith’s Building Blocks for the Grid gives one view of the OGF specifications: /OGFStandards_Dec10-07.ppt /OGFStandards_Dec10-07.ppt Wikipedia has useful articles on the SDOs and many of the specifications, with links to more detailed information