the standards landscape

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Accelerating business innovation;a Technology Strategy Board programme

The Standards Landscape

Dave Berry

Standards for Interoperable Grids: Experience from NextGRID and OMII-Europe

17th March 2008



Contents

• Standards and “Standards Defining Organisations”• Context: Competing organisations co-operating• The grid standards landscape• Some of the relevant organisations and standards

The nice thing about standards is, there are so many to choose from



Why Standards?

Interoperability of protocols

Portability of programs

Vendor p.o.v.

Ideal is a de facto monopoly, e.g. MS Office

Network effects give more market share to market leaders

User p.o.v. (IT Managers, Developers, …)

Ideal is a number of competing products

But need to share with other users

Interoperability and portability are orthogonal

and complementary



When is a Standard not a Standard?

When there is only one (real) implementation

I.e. created by a vendor to legitimize their product

Some accuse Office OpenXML of this

When nobody uses it

I.e., created by a committee with no user demand

Some wonder whether WS-Naming fits this description

When it is not the product of a Standards Defining Organisation

I.e. de facto standards

All these factors may change

Other vendors may implement it (is this happening with OpenXML?)

People may start to use it (is this happening with WS-Naming?)

An SDO may define it



Standards Defining Organisations (SDOs)

National

ISO (BSI, ANSI, …), ETSI

ISO is the international standards body formed from a membership of national organisations

Industry

OASIS, SNIA, DMTF, ITU, ECMA, IETF, …

Community

W3C, OGF, …

Subject-specific

IVOA, many more!



Who actually makes standards?

Interested partiesVendors, users, …SDOs provide support, procedures, publication, etc.

Companies & organisations that work together, standardise together

The result is competing groups and informal alliancesMembership of these alliances shifts from one standard to another,

depending on the goals of each organisation Sometimes this results in competing “standards”

E.g. WS-Resource Framework• IBM, HP, Fujitsu, CA, BEA, …

Vs. WS-Management • MS, Sun, Intel, Oracle, …



An example of competing standards

URL / URI / IRI

A single string

Easily pasted into scripts and documents

Ubiquitous

WS-Addressing

Augments URI with messaging information and metadata

Assumes tooling available (or hand-write the XML)

Supported by many web tools

- In theory, these are complementary standards- In practice, many people just use URIs- Part of a larger competition: REST vs. SOAP



The SOAP / WS stack

A (large) set of standards that can be combined to implement a comprehensive infrastructure

Examples

WS-Addressing

WS-Security

WS-Eventing

WS-Policy

WS-Transaction

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Web_service_specifications



An example of competing WS standards

WS-Resource Framework & WS-Notification

IBM, HP, Fujitsu, CA, BEA, …

Replaced OGSI

WS-Management & WS-Eventing

MS, Sun, Intel, Oracle, …

Evolved from WS-Transfer

This conflict was eventually resolved by the release of theWS-Resource Transfer specification

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480724.aspx



The effort required for standardisation

A typical working group or technical committee meets

Weekly by telephone

Face to face every 2-3 months

Time required to write, review and revise the documents

Outreach

Presentations, tutorials, joint meetings, …



The grid standards landscape

Current status

Primarily single-source systems competing for market share

E.g. Condor, Platform, Google, Globus

E.g. Finance industry

Initially secretive about use of grid

Now users seeking to break out of vendor lock-in

Some Academic Collaboration

E.g. EGEE and OSG



The Grid Environment

Physical Environment

Security• Authentication• Authorization• Policy implementation

Resources• Virtualization• Management• Optimization

Execution Management

• Execution Planning• Workflow• Work managers

Provisioning• Configuration• Deployment• Optimization

Data• Storage Mgmt.• Transport• Replica Mgmt.

Virtual Domains

• Service Groups• Virtual Organizations

Physical Environment

• Hardware• Network• Sensors• Equipment

I nfrastructure Profile

• Required interfaces supported by all services



W3C is an international consortium where member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards.

Founded in 1994, ~80 published recommendations, staff on 3 continentsMembers of W3C range from leading technology companies to non-profit

organisations and individuals.Best known for fundamental web standards, including:

• XML• XML

Schema

• XHTML• XSL/XSLT• MathML

• SSML • CCS• OWL

Several working groups are relevant to grid standards projects including:

• WS-Addressing

• WSDL 2.0 • MTOM

W3C: World-Wide Web Consortium



DMTF is an industry organization leading the development of management standards and integration technology.

Founded in 1992Best known for standards that address system management in

enterprise and Internet environments, including:

• CIM • WBEM • DMI

The DMTF and OGF are formally collaborating on extensions to CIM that support the management of grid infrastructures.

DMTF: Distributed Management Task Force



OASIS is a member-led, international nonprofit standards consortium concentrating on structured information and global e-business standards

Founded in 1993, ~65 projects, staff on 3 continentsMembers of OASIS are

Vendors, users, academics and governments Organizations, individuals and industry groups

Best known for e-business standards that address real world business requirements, including:

• UDDI• SAML• ebXML

• WS-Security• WSRP• WS-Reliability

• SPML• XACML• UBL

Host for key grid standards projects including:

• WSDM • WS Resource Transfer

• WS-Eventing

OASIS: Organization for the Advancement ofStructured Information Standards



ETSI: European Technology Standards Institute

ETSI is a member-led, international nonprofit standards consortium of the telecoms industry. It is officially responsible for the standardisation of ICT in Europe.

Founded in 1988

Best known for GSM and TETRA

The ETSI Grid group has commisioned “plug tests” of grid implementations and is looking to produce detailed tests for existing standards. It is also making links between the grid community and telecommunications standards.



OGF: Open Grid Forum

OGF is an international community leading the global standardization effort for grid computing.

Formed in 2006 from the merger of the Global Grid Forum( founded 2000) and the Enterprise Grid Alliance (founded 2004)

Members include

users, developers, and vendors. Industry, academics, research laboratories

Best known for standards and architectures for Grids, including:

• OGSA• SAGA• ByteIO

• GridFTP• GLUE• DRMAA

• JSDL• SRM• RNS/Naming

Also produces profile documents such as:

• Basic Security Profile• HPC Basic Profile

• Secure Addressing Profile• Secure Communication Profile



OGSA WSRF Basic Profile v1.0

OGSA needs a stable Web Services infrastructure… …but it is a design objective that OGSA be infrastructure agnosticHence WSRF basic profile for OGSAThere could be other basic profiles for OGSA

Normative reference specifications

WS-I Basic profile 1.1 & Basic security profile 1.0

WS-addressing

WS Resource Framework & WS Notification

WS-security

When WS Resource Transfer is available, OGSA might release a new Basic Profile



OGF Specifications

OGSA: Open Grid Services Architecture, which includes

JSDL: Job Submission Description Language

BES: Basic Execution Service

RSS: Resource Selection Service

ByteIO: POSIX-like IO

WS-DAI: Data Access and Integration

RNS: Resource Namespace Service

WS-Naming: Abstract Names

DMI: Data Movement Interface

SAGA: Simple API for Grid Applications

DRMAA: Distributed Resource Management Application API



Standard APIs vs Protocols

Workload Manager Client

Workload Manager

Native API

Native Protocol Engine

proprietaryAPI

proprietaryprotocol

Native Protocol Engine

DRMAA/SAGA

Native API

proprietaryprotocol

standardAPI

OGSA-BES

WS-I compliantSOAP toolkit

standardprotocol

OGSA-BES


DRMAA/SAGA

standardprotocol

standardAPI

OGSA-BES


standardprotocol

proprietaryAPI

Native API

From Building Blocks for the Grid, Chris Smith, eScience2007



Further reading

A snapshot of standards from DMTF, W3C, SNIA, OGF, OASIS, IETF, ITU and others can be seen at https://forge.gridforum.org/sf/go/wiki1479

Chris Smith’s Building Blocks for the Grid gives one view of the OGF specifications: http://grids.ucs.indiana.edu/ptliupages/presentations/OGFStandards_Dec10-07.ppt

Wikipedia has useful articles on the SDOs and many of the specifications, with links to more detailed information

the standards landscape

Documents