GRIDKIT - Advanced Middleware Infrastructure Support for the GRID
Project Overview
Currently available GRID middleware has been useful in getting a wide range of e-Science initiatives off the ground, but there is widespread recognition that a new generation of middleware, founded on a more principled model of distributed computation, is needed to ensure the continuance and growth of the GRID. The foundations of this more principled approach are now being defined in the emerging Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA). The aim of this project is to contribute to the long-term development of OGSA. In particular, we plan to contribute in both the ‘network infrastructure’ and the ‘middleware’ areas. In the former area, we have recently initiated an activity to develop a programmable networking infrastructure for the GRID called NETKIT. In the latter, we are initiating a project to prototype an advanced OGSA implementation, which will (experimentally) incorporate a number of features from component-based middleware platforms (both existing standards like OMG CCM and EJB and our own research in the area). Component-based middleware is considerably more mature than GRID middleware and, although it is targeted at a slightly different area, we believe it has much to offer in terms of experience and infrastructure support.
Objectives
We plan to extend GRID Services with some of the attractive features found in state of the art component-based distributed systems. One such feature is support for a model of GRID service provision in which third-party service providers implement components and configurations of components in self-describing binary packages which can then be flexibly deployed and combined by independent third-parties in a transparent way in heterogeneous hosting environments. Associated with this is an enhancement of the hosting environment so that services are deployed in a ‘container’ which is highly configurable at load time and run time in terms of network QoS, security, persistence, transactional behaviour etc. The aim is to raise the level of abstraction at which GRID service developers work by separating service provision from non-functional aspects of the deployment/operation of the service.
A presentation of the application of GridKit middleware can be viewed here. A Report on development progress up to April 2007 is attached.
Lancaster Computing used its GridKit middleware to develop a sensor network currently being tested on a location in the Riblle Valey. To view a video about the development: video GridKit requires QuickTime.
Ph.D. Thesis
D. Hughes, AdaPtP - a Framework for Building Adaptable Peer-to-Peer Systems, Ph.D. Thesis (University of Lancaster, August 2007)
Publications
G. Coulson, Pervasive Grids: Integrating Sensor Networks into the Fixed Grid, invited paper, Proc. Euro-American Workshop on Middleware for Sensor Networks, International Conference on Distributed Computing in Sensor Systems (DCOSS '06), San Francisco, USA, June 18-20, 2006 (available at: http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/computing/users/geoff/Publications/DCOSS06.pdf).
P. Grace, G. Coulson, G. Blair, B. Porter, D. Hughes, Dynamic Reconfiguration in Sensor Middleware, Proceedings of the first International Workshop on Middleware for Sensor Networks (MidSens'06), pp. 1-6, Melbourne, Australia, November 2006.
P. Sawyer, N. Bencomo, D. Hughes, P.Grace, H. J. Goldsby, B. C. H. Cheng, Visualizing the Analysis of Dynamically Adaptive Systems Using i* and DSLs, Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Requirements Engineering Visualization (REV'07), pp. 3–13, Delhi, India, October 15th, 2007.
D. Hughes, M. Daude, G. Coulson, G. Blair, Managing Heterogeneous Data Flows in Wireless Sensor Networks Using a ‘Split Personality’ Mote Platform, Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on SensorWebs, Databases and Mining in Networked Sensing Systems (SWDMNSS 2008), Turku, Finland, July 2008.
G. Coulson, D. Hughes, G. Blair, P. Grace, The Evolution of the GridStix Wireless Sensor Network Platform, Proceedings of the International Workshop on Sensor Network Engineering (IWSNE 08), co-located with International Conference of Distributed Computing in Sensor Systems (DCOSS 08), Santorini, Greece, June 2008.
H. J. Goldsby, P. Sawyer, N. Bencomo, D. Hughes, B. H. C. Cheng, Goal-Based Modeling of Dynamically Adaptive System Requirements, Proceedings of the 15th IEEE International Conference on Engineering of Computer-Based Systems (ECBS 08), pp. 36-45, Belfast, Northern Ireland, March 2008.
M. Jakeman, D. Hughes, G. Coulson, K. Lee, S. Pink, Supporting IPv6 Interaction with Wireless Sensor Networks Using NP++, Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Wireless Algorithms, Systems and Applications (WASA’08), Dallas, Texas, October 2008.
D. Hughes, N. Bencomo, G. Blair, G. Coulson, P. Grace, B. Porter, Exploiting Extreme Heterogeneity in a Flood Warning Scenario using the Open Overlays Middleware, demonstration abstract to be published in the international conference on Middleware (Middleware 2008), December 2008.