Transcript OGF eScience Function Geoffrey Fox Board Review April 9 2008 © 2006 Open Grid Forum.

OGF eScience Function
Geoffrey Fox
Board Review
April 9 2008
© 2006 Open Grid Forum
Some Principles and Issues
• Aim at Relevance and Excellence exploiting loose flexible
interactions with Standards and Enterprise
• Few activities will lead to new standards but loose coupling of
eScience and Standards will be mutually fruitful (e.g. paper on
clouds by myself and Jha/Merzky)
• Many activities jointly interesting and best jointly organized by
Enterprise and eScience
• Problem to address: Attract more of eScience community.
• I believe one must aim at the leaders in field as these ensure excellence.
• Current attendance levels due partly to view that OGF is a standards
organization (Forum part not common perception) but dominantly
• “Grids are stale” and in US “Grid funding” small and “(Tera)Grid
directions” unclear
• Important to attract more software providers
© 2006 Open Grid Forum
General Approach
• A few key community/research groups such as GIN
and (soon) Clouds
• Major part of program is event community call and
special workshops organized by leadership
• Special series like software provider forum but need
large attendance to work
• Difficult to fit into current events; European events have
enough attendance
• Disseminate through web-based record and special
issues of journals.
• Currently 8 submissions to general OGF 2008 special issue
• Previously had special issues on portals (3), workflow, GIS
and provenance with a total of 80 published papers.
• Do approximately one special issue per year
© 2006 Open Grid Forum
OGF Special Issue 2008
Concurrency&Computation: Practice&Experience
• Reliability in Grid Computing Systems
• The HPC Basic Profile and SAGA: Standardizing Compute Grid
Access in the Open Grid Forum
• Accessing RDF(S) Data Resources in Service-based Grid
Infrastructures
• WS-Naming: Location Migration, Replication, and Failure
Transparency Support for Web Services
• Profiles for Conveying the Secure Communication
Requirements of Web Services
• A General Encoding Framework for Representing Network
Measurement and Topology Data
• Interoperation of World-Wide Production e-Science
Infrastructures
• Using Clouds to Provide Grids Higher-Levels of Abstraction and
Explicit Support for Usage Modes
© 2006 Open Grid Forum
Immediate Steps
• Continue current approach with a focus on clouds that is very
interesting to many from all OGF functions
• This requires careful planning which is ongoing
• Note “data area” is also interesting to many but mature field
(like workflow) and OGF not well regarded in this area
• Clouds are new and OGF can lead and define attractive
activities that will draw people
• Expect to hold USA based special workshops starting in
September
• Possible difficulties
• Clouds did not come from Grid community
• Quite a bit of competition; CCC from CRA and activities at Grid
conferences (HPDC will have a Cloud panel)
• Some think Clouds are “just Grids re-hyped”
• OGF does not have strong contacts with leaders of Cloud initiatives or
virtualization
© 2006 Open Grid Forum
What can OGF Central do?
• Event management (OGF top class here).
• Following up to ensure good documentation of workshops etc.
(as Julie did for Cloud BOF)
• More resources on web pages would be useful although
current web site much improved and quite good
• Need "Information" specialist to gather and organize material (i.e. need
domain experts)
• Could OGF Europe fund?
• Good technology like streaming A/V (not access grid) and
other event technologies could offer premium service
• Gridforge optimized for archival capabilities like version control
etc. and not used much by eScience
• Instead need technologies with optimization to information
dissemination
• e.g. could have a Google gadget that one can download to get latest
OGF feeds
• Help needed to contact Cloud and virtualization experts
© 2006 Open Grid Forum
Some Observations
• Pursuing unrealistic goals leads to
• Too little attention being paid to important activities that could succeed
• Underestimate of success of OGF
• Alignment of functions does not require attention except to decrease
attention currently given to alignment
• Forced alignment responsible for some of current problems
• OGF should aim for excellence and relevance in its 3 functions and not force
common mechanisms/collaborations for success
• The event PC model should insure tactical coherence of functions; further
measures not needed?
• Interacting with members of different functions in corridors and technical
meetings is very positive and part of “OGF advantage”
• The majority of people I talk with, expect OGF to fold in next year or so
• Grid technology viewed as too complicated and not sustainable
• OGF cannot survive significant perturbation in near term
• OGF Europe is not well aligned with needs and directions of OGF?
• It embodies the old view of Grids and OGF. Can we change?
• e.g. Good for OGF-Europe to pay full time group chair and information expert
working for OGF – not for a particular technology group in Europe
© 2006 Open Grid Forum