Open Grid Forum
Encyclopedia
The Open Grid Forum is a community of users, developers, and vendors for standardization of grid computing
. It was formed in 2006 in a merger of the Global Grid Forum and the Enterprise Grid Alliance. The OGSA, OGSI, and JSDL standards were created by the OGF. The OGF models its creations of open standards on the IETF.
relating to Grids, and the building of Communities within the overall Grid community (including extending it to encompass wider participation from both academia and industry). Each of these function areas is then divided into Groups of three types: Working Groups with a generally tightly defined role (usually producing a standard), Research Groups with a looser role bringing together people to discuss developments within their field and generate use cases and spawn working group
s, and Community Groups (restricted to community function area, not yet very common, this description needs work).
Three meetings are organized per year, divided (approximately evenly after averaging over a number of years) between North America, Europe and East Asia. (See schedule of events for more information). Many working groups organize face-to-face meetings in the interim.
In addition to technical standards, the OGF Document series comprises over 70 community-developed informational and experimental documents.
API was implemented in Sun's Grid engine
and also in the University of Wisconsin-Madison's program Condor
. The separate Globus Alliance
maintains an implementation of some of these standards through the Globus Toolkit
. The current release of UNICORE
is based on the OGSA architecture and JSDL.
) technologists was discussed at a "Birds of a Feather" session in November 1998 at the annual SCxx supercomputing conference. Based on positive response to the idea during this BOF, Ian Foster and Bill Johnston convened the first Grid Forum meeting at NASA Ames in June 1999, drawing roughly 100 people, mostly from the US. A group of organizers nominated Charlie Catlett
(from Argonne National Laboratory
and the University of Chicago
) to serve as the initial chair, confirmed via a plenary vote was held at the 2nd Grid Forum meeting in Chicago in October 1999. With extensive advice and assistance from IETF leaders, OGF established a standards process that is based heavily on the Internet Standards Process of the IETF. OGF is managed by a steering group whose members are selected by the community through a nomcom process that IETF uses, as outlined in RFC 2282.
During 2008 groups similar to Grid Forum began to organize in Europe (called eGrid) and Japan. Discussions among leaders of these groups resulted in combining strength to form Open Grid Forum which met for the first time in Amsterdam in March 2001. GGF-1 in Amsterdam followed five successful Grid Forum meetings. Catlett served as GGF Chair for two 3-year terms and was succeeded by Mark Linesch (from Hewlett Packard) in September 2004.
At GGF-18 (the 23rd gathering of the forum, counting the first five GF meetings) in September 2006 GGF became Open Grid Forum (OGF) based on a merger with an industry group named Enterprise Grid Alliance (EGA).
Grid computing
Grid computing is a term referring to the combination of computer resources from multiple administrative domains to reach a common goal. The grid can be thought of as a distributed system with non-interactive workloads that involve a large number of files...
. It was formed in 2006 in a merger of the Global Grid Forum and the Enterprise Grid Alliance. The OGSA, OGSI, and JSDL standards were created by the OGF. The OGF models its creations of open standards on the IETF.
Organization
The OGF has two principal functions (plus an administrative function) being the development of StandardsStandards organization
A standards organization, standards body, standards developing organization , or standards setting organization is any organization whose primary activities are developing, coordinating, promulgating, revising, amending, reissuing, interpreting, or otherwise producing technical standards that are...
relating to Grids, and the building of Communities within the overall Grid community (including extending it to encompass wider participation from both academia and industry). Each of these function areas is then divided into Groups of three types: Working Groups with a generally tightly defined role (usually producing a standard), Research Groups with a looser role bringing together people to discuss developments within their field and generate use cases and spawn working group
Working group
A working group is an interdisciplinary collaboration of researchers working on new research activities that would be difficult to develop under traditional funding mechanisms . The lifespan of the WG can last anywhere between a few months and several years...
s, and Community Groups (restricted to community function area, not yet very common, this description needs work).
Three meetings are organized per year, divided (approximately evenly after averaging over a number of years) between North America, Europe and East Asia. (See schedule of events for more information). Many working groups organize face-to-face meetings in the interim.
Standards
The following major standards have been produced by OGF:- GridFTPGridFTPGridFTP is an extension of the standard File Transfer Protocol for use with Grid computing. It is defined as part of the Globus toolkit, under the organisation of the Global Grid Forum ....
: Extensions to the File Transfer Protocol for high-speed, secure, and reliable data transfer. - Grid Laboratory Uniform EnvironmentGrid Laboratory Uniform EnvironmentGLUE, which stands for Grid Laboratory Uniform Environment, is a technology-agnostic information model for a uniform representation of Grid resources.-GLUE 1.3:...
(GLUE), is a technology-agnostic information model for a uniform representation of Grid resources. - SAGA: The Simple API for Grid Applications describes an interface for high-level GridGrid computingGrid computing is a term referring to the combination of computer resources from multiple administrative domains to reach a common goal. The grid can be thought of as a distributed system with non-interactive workloads that involve a large number of files...
application programming. - Open Grid Services ArchitectureOpen Grid Services ArchitectureThe Open Grid Services Architecture describes an architecture for a service-oriented grid computing environment for business and scientific use, developed within the Global Grid Forum...
: The OGSA describes an architecture for a service-orientedService-oriented architectureIn software engineering, a Service-Oriented Architecture is a set of principles and methodologies for designing and developing software in the form of interoperable services. These services are well-defined business functionalities that are built as software components that can be reused for...
grid computing environment for business and scientific use. - DRMAADRMAADRMAA or Distributed Resource Management Application API is a high-level Open Grid Forum API specification for the submission and control of jobs to a Distributed Resource Management system, such as a Cluster or Grid computing infrastructure...
: Distributed Resource Management Application API is a high-level APIApplication programming interfaceAn application programming interface is a source code based specification intended to be used as an interface by software components to communicate with each other...
specification for the submission and control of jobs to one or more Distributed Resource Management Systems (DRMS) within a GridGrid computingGrid computing is a term referring to the combination of computer resources from multiple administrative domains to reach a common goal. The grid can be thought of as a distributed system with non-interactive workloads that involve a large number of files...
architecture. - Job Submission Description LanguageJob Submission Description LanguageJob Submission Description Language is an extensible XML specification from the Global Grid Forum for the description of simple tasks to non-interactive computer execution systems...
: An extensible XMLXMLExtensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
specification for the description of simple tasks to non-interactive computer execution systems. The specification focuses on the description of computational task submissions to traditional high-performance computer systems like batch schedulers. - CDDLMCDDLMCDDLM or Configuration Description, Deployment, and Lifecycle Management Specification is a Global Grid Forum standard for the management, deployment and configuration of Grid Service lifecycles or inter-organization resources.- Structure :...
: Configuration Description, Deployment, and Lifecycle Management Specification is a standard for the management, deployment and configuration of Grid Service lifecycles or inter-organization resources. - Resource Specification Language
- GridRPCGridRPCGridRPC is Remote Procedure Call over the Grid. This paradigm has been proposed by the GridRPC working group of the Open Grid Forum , and an API has been defined in order for clients to access remote servers as simply as a function call...
: Grid Remote Procedure Call designs OGF recommendations for a grid-enabled, remote procedure callRemote procedure callIn computer science, a remote procedure call is an inter-process communication that allows a computer program to cause a subroutine or procedure to execute in another address space without the programmer explicitly coding the details for this remote interaction...
(RPC) mechanism. - DFDLData Format Description LanguageData Format Description Language is a modeling language from the Open Grid Forum for describing general text and binary data. A DFDL model or schema allows any text or binary data to be read from its native format and to be presented as an instance of an information set...
: Data Format Description Language for the modeling of general text and binary data.
In addition to technical standards, the OGF Document series comprises over 70 community-developed informational and experimental documents.
Implementations
The first version of the DRMAADRMAA
DRMAA or Distributed Resource Management Application API is a high-level Open Grid Forum API specification for the submission and control of jobs to a Distributed Resource Management system, such as a Cluster or Grid computing infrastructure...
API was implemented in Sun's Grid engine
Sun Grid Engine
Oracle Grid Engine, previously known as Sun Grid Engine , previously known as CODINE or GRD , is an open source batch-queuing system, developed and supported by Sun Microsystems...
and also in the University of Wisconsin-Madison's program Condor
Condor cycle scavenger
Condor is an open source high-throughput computing software framework for coarse-grained distributed parallelization of computationally intensive tasks....
. The separate Globus Alliance
Globus Alliance
The Globus Alliance is an international association dedicated to developing fundamental technologies needed to build grid computing infrastructures...
maintains an implementation of some of these standards through the Globus Toolkit
Globus Toolkit
The Globus Toolkit, currently at version 5, is an open source toolkit for building computing grids developed and provided by the Globus Alliance.-Standards implementation:The Globus Toolkit is an implementation of the following standards:...
. The current release of UNICORE
UNICORE
UNICORE is a Grid computing technology that provides seamless, secure, and intuitive access to distributed Grid resources such as supercomputers or cluster systems and information stored in databases. UNICORE was developed in two projects funded by the German ministry for education and research...
is based on the OGSA architecture and JSDL.
History
The concept of a forum to bring together developers, practitioners, and users of distributed computing (or grid computingGrid computing
Grid computing is a term referring to the combination of computer resources from multiple administrative domains to reach a common goal. The grid can be thought of as a distributed system with non-interactive workloads that involve a large number of files...
) technologists was discussed at a "Birds of a Feather" session in November 1998 at the annual SCxx supercomputing conference. Based on positive response to the idea during this BOF, Ian Foster and Bill Johnston convened the first Grid Forum meeting at NASA Ames in June 1999, drawing roughly 100 people, mostly from the US. A group of organizers nominated Charlie Catlett
Charlie Catlett
Charlie Catlett is a Senior Computer Scientist at Argonne National Laboratory and a Senior Fellow in the , a joint institute of Argonne National Laboratory and The University of Chicago. From 2007-2011 he was Chief Information Officer and director of the Computing and Information Systems Division...
(from Argonne National Laboratory
Argonne National Laboratory
Argonne National Laboratory is the first science and engineering research national laboratory in the United States, receiving this designation on July 1, 1946. It is the largest national laboratory by size and scope in the Midwest...
and the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
) to serve as the initial chair, confirmed via a plenary vote was held at the 2nd Grid Forum meeting in Chicago in October 1999. With extensive advice and assistance from IETF leaders, OGF established a standards process that is based heavily on the Internet Standards Process of the IETF. OGF is managed by a steering group whose members are selected by the community through a nomcom process that IETF uses, as outlined in RFC 2282.
During 2008 groups similar to Grid Forum began to organize in Europe (called eGrid) and Japan. Discussions among leaders of these groups resulted in combining strength to form Open Grid Forum which met for the first time in Amsterdam in March 2001. GGF-1 in Amsterdam followed five successful Grid Forum meetings. Catlett served as GGF Chair for two 3-year terms and was succeeded by Mark Linesch (from Hewlett Packard) in September 2004.
At GGF-18 (the 23rd gathering of the forum, counting the first five GF meetings) in September 2006 GGF became Open Grid Forum (OGF) based on a merger with an industry group named Enterprise Grid Alliance (EGA).
See also
- Grid computingGrid computingGrid computing is a term referring to the combination of computer resources from multiple administrative domains to reach a common goal. The grid can be thought of as a distributed system with non-interactive workloads that involve a large number of files...
- Open Grid Services Infrastructure (OGSI)Open Grid Services InfrastructureThe Open Grid Services Infrastructure was published by the Global Grid Forum as a proposed recommendation in June 2003. It was intended to provide an infrastructure layer for the Open Grid Services Architecture...
- Open Cloud Computing InterfaceOpen Cloud Computing InterfaceThe Open Cloud Computing Interface comprises a set of open community-lead specifications delivered through the Open Grid Forum, which define how infrastructure service providers can deliver their compute, data, and network resource offerings through a standardized interface. OCCI has a set of...
- Data Format Description Language (DFDL)Data Format Description LanguageData Format Description Language is a modeling language from the Open Grid Forum for describing general text and binary data. A DFDL model or schema allows any text or binary data to be read from its native format and to be presented as an instance of an information set...