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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Med
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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
Dev
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About UA
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• 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
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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.