TORONTO - Grid computing and Web services may
eventually converge until there is no distinction
between the two, Paul Messina of Caltech, chairman of
the Grid Forum Advisory Committee, said in opening
remarks to Global Grid Forum 4 this week.
The choice isn't between Web services or Grid
middleware, Messina said, because each provides
something. Web services can't do it all, he said, but
with its pervasive use and standards, it makes sense
for Grid computing to take advantage of it and build
on it.
"When a technology has mass markets, it's a good idea
to use it where possible, so we should explore the use
of Web services in the context of Grids and GGF
activities," Messina said.
"'Which one wins?' is the wrong question," he said.
"Success is that eventually there is no distinction
between the two."
Messina said it's not to early to begin to develop
standards for Grid technology, one of the primary aims
of the Global Grid Forum. The field is new, so there's
not a lot of experience, but standards would increase
Grid technology's use.
"Reference implementations are extremely important and
useful," Messina said.
Grid is "a premier example of applications-driven R&D
inspired by the confluence of several technological
trends," involving "applications push and technology
pull," Messina said. "But applications projects are
starting to say they have a job to do, it's too late
to take a long-range approach, they must focus on
solving their problems by whatever local optimizations
they can devise."
High Expectations, Fragmentation Fears
Messina, a self-described "graybeard" with two decades
of distributed computing experience, said he is
concerned about this "fragmented Grid world." There
are "many, many Grid projects worldwide," he said,
which is good, but there are also "very high
expectations of quick success. This is scary. It is
difficult to erase negative initial impressions."
"We have many challenges as we try to craft standards
at the same time as operational, production Grids are
being implemented and the general computing
environment is evolving rapidly," Messina said.
"Somehow we need to strike the right balance between
elegance and timeliness, between innovation and
exploiting existing technologies."
Writing and critiquing proposals is important, he
urged attendees, as is developing reference
implementations.
The advisory committee is doing its part by working
with other activities such as the Peer-to-Peer Working
Group and the New Productivity initiative, Messina
said.
The Peer-to-Peer Working Group was organized to
facilitate and accelerate the advancement of
infrastructure best-known practices for peer-to-peer
computing, and NPi's primary goal is to specify a set
of standards for effective interoperability across the
Distributed Resource Management (DRM) space.
With DRM
standards in place, it will be easier to build
efficient, multi-vendor distributed computing
solutions, Messina said. NPi is "an open,
industry-wide group of leading system vendors,
independent software vendors and service providers,"
he said.
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