1. Coordination of Middleware Development & Standardization
Sergio Andreozzi
INFN-CNAF
EGI-DS WP3 Consolidation Workshop
29-31 Jan 2008, CERN

2. Outline EGI and Grid middleware development Why should I care?
What can I do?
The experience of OMII-Europe
Standardization
Development
R&D

3. Why a Middleware function in EGI
Multiple middleware stacks are in use in EU
They exist in order to satisfy different needs
All evolving in functionalities and technologies
the progress in the standardization, convergence and full interoperability of the major stacks is expected to be long
Required by NGIs
see WP2 use case collection
Commercial providers not appearing, nor will probably appear soon
No Infrastructures without middlewares

4. Why a Middleware function in EGI
Enhancements will continue to be needed also in the steady state
current VOs still are evolving their modus operandi
most users are researchers who are expected to evolve their way of using the Grid and keep on the cutting edge of technology
new VOs/Scientific Communities normally need new functionalities
e.g. WISDOM requiring the usage of different middleware stacks to access different types of resources
pushing forward the evolution of the current components standardization process towards uniform interfaces and NGI’s to support more than 1 stack
The users/VOs and the EGI “operation branch” will continue for quite some time needing specific enhancements in performance, reliability and/or functionality

5. Main Grid Middleware Stacks Available Today
From Europe
gLite universe
UNICORE
ARC
OMII-UK
From US: Globus, Condor/VDT
From Asia: NAREGI, CrownGrid
Europe plays a key role in middleware development

6. Grid Subsystems made in EU
OGSA capability
gLite
UNICORE
OMII-UK
ARC
Security.AttributeAuthority
VOMS+SAML
use VOMS-SAML
VOMS-Client
Security.Accounting
DGAS, APEL
RUS
SGAS
Data.Management.Storage
StoRM, DPM
SMS
SMART-SE,
ARC Gridftp
Data.Management.Transfer
FTS
UNICORE FTS
Data.Access.Relational
OGSA-DAI
Data.Access.FlatFiles
GFAL
TSI
Information.Model
GLUE
GLUE (future)
Information.Discovery
OpenLDAP
CIS
Grimoires
Information.Monitoring
GridICE,
R-GMA
CIS, RUS-based LLView
GridMonitor
ExecMan.ExecService
GT2 Gram,
CREAM+BES
TSS
GridSAM
GridManager
ExecMan.JobManager
WMS
XNJS
Taverna & BPEL Man. Workflow
ExecMan.CandidateSetGen
Service-Orchestrator
BrokeredClient
ExecMan.ExecPlannService
For a complete list, see

7. The Role of EGI for Grid Middleware
Sustain European Grid Middlewares
Coordinate the evolution of the current EU Middleware stacks:
To introduce in an efficient and compatible way new functionalities and improvements
To complete the transition towards the WS-world
To adopt a complete agreed set of standards
Promote convergence

8. The Role of EGI for Grid Middleware
Evolve current middleware stacks towards:
Achieving standard-based interoperability
systems/organizations able to provide/accept services from other systems/organizations and to use the services exchanged to enable them to operate effectively together
Adding new functionalities based on requirements from:
supported VOs
potentially new VOs
operations

9. Interoperability Definition of coherent set of standards/profiles
Participation/contribution to standardization bodies
To consolidate the available standards by bringing feedbacks from productions environments
To promote and contribute to the definition of missing standards
To contribute to the definition of compliance test suites
standards/
profiles
requirements
production
environments
standard bodies
contributions
software components

10. Interoperability Development
Moving away from gateway-based interoperation towards standard-based interoperability
Automatic standard conformance verification via test suites (supported by ETICS)
Definition of common organizational procedures
Priorities identification
Decision making
Program execution

11. The OMII-Europe Experience
Open Middleware Infrastructure Institute for Europe
EU-funded project: FP6, RI
Duration: May > April 2008
Involved middleware stacks:
gLite, UNICORE, Globus, OMII-UK, CrownGrid, VEGA-GOS
Mission:
Enabling of e-infrastructure interoperability by providing standards-based middleware components leveraging existing work and activities

12. OMII-Europe Working Cicle
Standards Compliance Testing and QA
JRA2
SA2
New Components
Standards Implementation
JRA4
Components
JRA1 IN
Globus
Benchmarking
Repository
OUT
SA1
OMII-UK
Components
CROWN
Supported Components on Eval. Infrastructure
JRA3
Integrated Components
SA3

13. OMII-Europe Main Contributions To Standard Adoption
OGSA-BES
Functional interface for executing activites
CREAM-BES and UNICORE-BES
GLUE
Common definition/representation of Grid entities
Definition as OGF standard, reference implementations
VOMS-SAML
Functional interface for retrieving user privilege attributes
Enabling UNICORE to access VOMS privilege attributes
Accounting/RUS
Functional interface for exchanging accounting information
Exchanging accounting information across gLite, UNICORE and Globus

14. EGI and R&D In connection with Investigation of new approaches
operation and middleware experts
external organizations
academies and industries
Investigation of new approaches
via incubator projects
for medium-term evolutions
Development of prototypes

15. Conclusion
Grid middleware is the foundation of the European research infrastructure
EGI recognizes the existence of and needs to support different middleware stacks satisfying different requirements
A great set of components made in EU exist!
these components must be further developed and sustained
Standard-based Interoperability is the main path to follow to:
Realize an integrated European Grid infrastructure with different types of resources
Integrate with world-wide Grid infrastructures