universal acessibility to the grid via metagrid infrastructure soha maad, brian coghlan, eamonn...

Universal Acessibility to the Grid via Metagrid Infrastructure

Soha Maad, Brian Coghlan, Eamonn Kenny, Gabriele Pierantoni, Oliver Lyttleton, David O'Callaghan

About Universal Accessibility

• rooted in the concept of Design for All in Human Computer InteractionAbout UA

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• addresses accessibility problems in human interaction with software applications and telematic services.

About Universal Accessibility

• is supported by various development methodologies and platforms.About UA

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About Universal Accessibility

• Various application domains benefited from research and development in this area including:About UA

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• interactive television and media

• children educational games

• interfaces for the physically handicapped

• interfaces for various devices

Relevance to the Grid

• Grid applications involving social interaction

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About UA

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About UA

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• Open-ended interactivity

• Access for the disabled

• Generalised universal access:

G2GG2G

G2BG2BG2CG2C

e-hospital (e.g. remote consultancy, e-surgery)

e-govt (e.g. G2B, G2C, G2G)

e-business (e.g. collaborative engineering)

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• Direct access to remote external devices at the grid boundaries

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About UA

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Proposal

• Now being solved for each of N middlewares rather than just once

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• Develop an infrastructure for:About UA

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serving the distant minority

coping with cultural diversity

eLearning, independent of geographical location

serving enterprise, e.g. management of data centres

Challenges

About UA

Relevance

Challenges

Solutions

Proposal

• the lack of an underlying infrastructure similar to that of a desktop OS

• Why needed?

To hide user I/O

Plug-n-play of devices

• the dilemma between hiding the grid versus making it more transparent

• Why hide?

To simplify

• Why transparent?

To customise for user access

• the software engineering practice adopted in grid middleware development

• Why a problem?

Bottom-up middleware, not driven by apps

Current Partial Solutions [1]

• the development of grid middleware supporting interaction with heterogeneous mobile devices [Jameel et al, 2005]About UA

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Current Partial Solutions [2]

• wrapping the computational and resource intensive grid tasks, to allow the accessibility to the grid via hand held devices [Kiani et al, 2005]

About UA

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Current Partial Solutions [3]

• the development of common web-based grid application portals allowing the applications' users to customize their interfaces to the grid [Lindemann et al, 2005]

About UA

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Current Partial Solutions [4]

About UA

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• Enhancement for grid interactivity

[Rosmanith et al, 2005]int.eu.gridint.eu.grid

Current Partial Solutions [5]

About UA

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• the development of application models for the grid

[Wu et al, 2005]

Current Partial Solutions - Summary

About UA

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• While each of these efforts towards universal accessibility

to the grid does address the problem to some extent, none

of them enables acomplete solution.

Metagrid Infrastructure

• to host solutions to all issues related to universal accessibility to the grid

ObjectiveAbout UA

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Metagrid Infrastructure

• used so far in the context of inter-grid interoperability

• extends the notion of interoperability to embrace grid application interoperability (interactivity and universal accessibility).

ContextAbout UA

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Metagrid Infrastructure

• heavily based on existing grid middleware services and architecture:

– EGEE

– Globus

– CrossGrid

– GridPP

– GGF

• hosts one or more target grid techologies (hosting WebCom, LCG2 and GT4)

• supports its own services

DependenciesAbout UA

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Metagrid Infrastructure

• transparent grid filesystem:

– supports all forms of data access (r/w/x) across arbitrary grid middleware

– provides a logical user view of grid data (e.g. supports easy integration of the data centre in the enterprise)

– discover data during interaction in media applications.

– can improve the utility of the EGEE middleware.

Transparent ServicesAbout UA

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Metagrid Infrastructure

• MetaGrid Submission Service (MSS)

• MetaGrid Broker (MB)

• MetaGrid Security Exchange (MSX)

• MetaGrid Job Exchange (MJX)

Metagrid ServicesAbout UA

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Metagrid Infrastructure

• user interaction services

• special purpose discovery services to support various forms of interaction especially in media applications

• and intelligent interpreters to support e-Government data semantics.

Value-Added ServicesAbout UA

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Metagrid Infrastructure

• Places the user within the metagrid environment rather than in any one target grid environment

User CentricAbout UA

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User

MetagridMetagridEngineEngine

EGEEEGEE

GridPPGridPP

GlobusGlobus

Other Other MiddlewareMiddleware

• The user obtains universal accessibility via the metagrid services, and the target grid technologies are relieved of the need to support direct user and device interactions.