1. ©CLRC/ITD/Keith G JefferyEU GRIDs Activity: Information Issues 30 April 2002 1 EU GRIDs Activity: Information Issues Keith G Jeffery, Director, IT & Head, BITD kgj@.rl.ac.uk http://www.bitd.clrc.ac.uk/

2. ©CLRC/ITD/Keith G JefferyEU GRIDs Activity: Information Issues 30 April 2002 2 CLRC-RAL Site

3. ©CLRC/ITD/Keith G JefferyEU GRIDs Activity: Information Issues 30 April 2002 3 Structure of Talk GRID and GRIDs EU and FP6 Example: Environment Related Activities ERCIM Relationship to JISC Activity

4. ©CLRC/ITD/Keith G JefferyEU GRIDs Activity: Information Issues 30 April 2002 4 The GRID Bible

5. ©CLRC/ITD/Keith G JefferyEU GRIDs Activity: Information Issues 30 April 2002 5 The GRIDs Architecture Knowledge Layer Information LayerComputation / Data Layer Data to Knowledge Control

6. ©CLRC/ITD/Keith G JefferyEU GRIDs Activity: Information Issues 30 April 2002 6 The Computation/Data Grid a computation / data grid –raw computing power –associated data stores –network-connected –both floating point computation and data- handling with logic;

7. ©CLRC/ITD/Keith G JefferyEU GRIDs Activity: Information Issues 30 April 2002 7 The GRIDs Architecture Knowledge Layer Information LayerComputation / Data Layer Data to Knowledge Control

8. ©CLRC/ITD/Keith G JefferyEU GRIDs Activity: Information Issues 30 April 2002 8 The Information Grid an information grid superimposed –connecting together the major information sources –interfaces : homogeneous access to heterogeneous distributed information –sophisticated statistical analysis / reduction techniques for floating point numbers, textual information and multimedia information – special facilities for images –all with associated visualisation and VR (virtual reality) facilities.

9. ©CLRC/ITD/Keith G JefferyEU GRIDs Activity: Information Issues 30 April 2002 9 The GRIDs Architecture Knowledge Layer Information LayerComputation / Data Layer Data to Knowledge Control

10. ©CLRC/ITD/Keith G JefferyEU GRIDs Activity: Information Issues 30 April 2002 10 The Knowledge Grid a knowledge grid superimposed –utilising KDD (knowledge discovery in database) technology of which a well-known component is ‘data mining’. –support intelligent assists to decision makers (from control room to strategic thinkers) –provide interpretational semantics on the information.

11. ©CLRC/ITD/Keith G JefferyEU GRIDs Activity: Information Issues 30 April 2002 11 In addition…... Each grid will have suitable security controls –information availability –prevention of unauthorised access appropriate to the source and the accessor. Similarly rights access (e.g. copyright, IPR) will be controlled.

12. ©CLRC/ITD/Keith G JefferyEU GRIDs Activity: Information Issues 30 April 2002 12 A POSSIBLE ARCHITECTURE USER SOURCE RESOURCE Resource Metadata Resource Agent User Agent User Metadata Source Metadata Source Agent The GRIDs Environment Brokers

13. ©CLRC/ITD/Keith G JefferyEU GRIDs Activity: Information Issues 30 April 2002 13 Classification of Metadata data (document) SCHEMANAVIGATIONALASSOCIATIVE how to get it constrain it view to users

14. ©CLRC/ITD/Keith G JefferyEU GRIDs Activity: Information Issues 30 April 2002 14 Metadata There is growing acceptance (especially in the W3C world) that Xm can be divided into: –(1) schema metadata (constrains the data formally) example is a database schema or a DTD –(2) navigational metadata (provides access - may be a URL, could be a database view or query) –(3) associative metadata (related to the resource being described and divided into: (i) descriptive metadata: e.g. library catalogue card (ii) restrictive metadata: eg rights access (iii) supportive metadata: eg dictionaries, thesauri, domain ontologies)

15. ©CLRC/ITD/Keith G JefferyEU GRIDs Activity: Information Issues 30 April 2002 15 Structure of Talk GRID and GRIDs EU and FP6 Example: Environment Related Activities ERCIM Relationship to JISC Activity

16. ©CLRC/ITD/Keith G JefferyEU GRIDs Activity: Information Issues 30 April 2002 16 EU and FP6 FP5: already some activity: –GRID networking: Datatag –computingGRID: EuroGrid, DAMIEN, GRIP, GRIDLAB –DataGRID: DataGrid –computingGRID/Engineering: GRIA Basically GRID not GRIDs but –Some support for GRIDs Information Activities: tangentially through projects in metadata (digital libraries, museums, media archives), e-trust etc

17. ©CLRC/ITD/Keith G JefferyEU GRIDs Activity: Information Issues 30 April 2002 17 FP6 ERA (European Research Area) –Philippe Busquin New instruments (NoE, IP) –Much larger scale GRIDs technology prominent in thinking of EC officials –Information landscape –Knowledge Society

18. ©CLRC/ITD/Keith G JefferyEU GRIDs Activity: Information Issues 30 April 2002 18 Structure of Talk GRID and GRIDs EU and FP6 Example: Environment Related Activities ERCIM Relationship to JISC Activity

19. ©CLRC/ITD/Keith G JefferyEU GRIDs Activity: Information Issues 30 April 2002 19 IST-Environment Strawman Architecture User Interface – VR, w/s, PDA mobile/ ambient Decision Support Information Management Analysis, Modelling, Simulation Integration of Heterogeneous data sources Sensor systems Knowledge as rules Knowledge GRID Informati on GRID Data / Computati on GRID

20. ©CLRC/ITD/Keith G JefferyEU GRIDs Activity: Information Issues 30 April 2002 20 Structure of Talk GRID and GRIDs EU and FP6 Example: Environment Related Activities ERCIM Relationship to JISC Activity

21. ©CLRC/ITD/Keith G JefferyEU GRIDs Activity: Information Issues 30 April 2002 21 W3C Semantic Web –Meaning, not just structure (syntax) –Ontologies, DAML + OIL –Multilinguality –Information interoperability Web of Trust –Authentication (certification) –Authorisation roles

22. ©CLRC/ITD/Keith G JefferyEU GRIDs Activity: Information Issues 30 April 2002 22 Metadata Libraries –IFLA model, Marc (in all its dialects!) Museums –Various metadata standards Scientific Data Collections –Various metadata standards, some existing for > 40 years Engineering Data Exchange –STEP/Express

23. ©CLRC/ITD/Keith G JefferyEU GRIDs Activity: Information Issues 30 April 2002 23 Metadata (2) Media industry –Many metadata standards Retail industry –Some standardisation of metadata –(remember Kimball tags?) Etc etc

24. ©CLRC/ITD/Keith G JefferyEU GRIDs Activity: Information Issues 30 April 2002 24 Metadata: Synthesis Dublin Core Metadata Initiative –‘Lowest common denominator’ –Can generate from almost any other metadata E.g. Marc <> DC (Nordic Metadata Initiative) –But only a first level indicator for resource discovery –Extensions through Qualifiers Element refinement Encoding scheme

25. ©CLRC/ITD/Keith G JefferyEU GRIDs Activity: Information Issues 30 April 2002 25 Metadata: Conclusion All agree DC is useful ‘top-level’ resource discovery –machine reading –human understanding But is insufficiently formal for –machine understanding Formalised DC defined, but also –need specific metadata by ‘field’ (detail, semantics) –and hence need for metadata interoperability

26. ©CLRC/ITD/Keith G JefferyEU GRIDs Activity: Information Issues 30 April 2002 26 Trust Authentication –User is who they claim to be –Certification (against id/pw) –More secure (additional physical token) Authorisation –User can access [mode] source [restrictions] subject to [legal restrictions][commercial restrictions] –role

27. ©CLRC/ITD/Keith G JefferyEU GRIDs Activity: Information Issues 30 April 2002 27 Trust Peer to peer trust (across servers / services) – ‘passing of trust’ Allows assurance that –It really was ‘x’ who asserted that ‘y’ was true –‘x’ does have credit for this transaction e-Trust and i-Trust projects

28. ©CLRC/ITD/Keith G JefferyEU GRIDs Activity: Information Issues 30 April 2002 28 e-Learning EC stress need for ‘lifelong learning’ UK has good track record, OU and others First WWW-based university course (Peter Murray-Rust, Birkbeck) Requires e-information (and thus information layer of GRIDs) with process

29. ©CLRC/ITD/Keith G JefferyEU GRIDs Activity: Information Issues 30 April 2002 29 Structure of Talk GRID and GRIDs EU and FP6 Example: Environment Related Activities ERCIM Relationship to JISC Activity

30. ©CLRC/ITD/Keith G JefferyEU GRIDs Activity: Information Issues 30 April 2002 30 ERCIM: www.ercim.org ‘national IT labs’ of European countries Working on FP6 with Philippe Busquin and EC officials (Gerard Comyn etc) Planning large-scale activities in the area of GRIDs in the sense of large-scale distributed systems for the citizen in the context of ERA

31. ©CLRC/ITD/Keith G JefferyEU GRIDs Activity: Information Issues 30 April 2002 31 Structure of Talk GRID and GRIDs EU and FP6 Example: Environment Related Activities ERCIM Relationship to JISC Activity

32. ©CLRC/ITD/Keith G JefferyEU GRIDs Activity: Information Issues 30 April 2002 32 Relationship to JISC FP6 plans to build on / bridge across national initiatives JISC/UKOLN/Information Environment (DNER) is a great start Also work on e-learning GRIDs (not GRID) provides an architectural framework to move forward

33. ©CLRC/ITD/Keith G JefferyEU GRIDs Activity: Information Issues 30 April 2002 33 Finally And then there’s ambient computing and GRIDs… but that’s another talk