TABLE OF CONTENTS In this theme, we take a look at how the Grid community is adopting and exposing its functionality as Web services, in the form of OGSA-based distributed services. OGSA services re-introduce the notion of state to a Web service so that services can be referenced or monitored and that steering applications can receive distributed notifications of state changes.
This convergence of technologies (if widely adopted by both communities) could represent a major step forward in the goal of ubiquitous deployment, which is needed to make the Grid dream a reality. This integration and related issues are discussed in Chapter 14, the final chapter of this book.
Looking at the more longer-term future, as Grid deployment increases, other technologies such as P2P will become increasingly more important to address the issues of scalability and discovery in real-world dynamic environments, which some applications are already employing. However, for this to be successful, any proposals need to undergo a standardization (or other) process or be accepted by the community at large. There is currently much effort in this direction [193] [194].
The Globus toolkit (GT) is the de facto open source toolkit for Grid computing. The functionality of the GT version 3.x is exposed as a collection of virtual Open Grid Services Architecture services [21]. OGSA services, or Grid services, extend Web services, discussed in the previous two chapters, to add features that are often...
