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Digital data are stored everywhere: pictures, music and videos from every household; massive databases in public and commercial companies; huge volumes of scientific data in research institutes. The Internet allows these data to be made available to remote consumers, but conventional technologies only allow data processing when both the data and processing know-how are located in one place. Grid technologies strive to enable seamless distribution and utilization of various Internet-based resources, but these technologies are not yet mature enough to offer reliable and standardized services.
The KnowARC project will develop software foundations for a grid solution that will suit everybody—scientists, businesses and individuals alike—thus paving the road for the grid to become a household phenomenon. The project, which began June 1, is funded by the European Union and involves 10 partners from seven European countries.
"The goal is to develop a grid solution that would allow any group of scientists that need to collaborate on a problem to quickly set up a resource-sharing environment using their own resources and exercising their own policies, without going through the hassles of joining massive infrastructure projects or hiring grid experts," says Oxana Smirnova from Lund University.
The NorduGrid collaboration initiated the KnowARC project. NorduGrid designed and developed the Advanced Resource Connector middleware, now used in more than 60 installations worldwide. KnowARC will fuse methods for know-how sharing with the grid technology offered through the ARC middleware. The resulting software will not only support sharing and using compute and data storage resources, but also sharing different problem-solving methodologies and application-specific knowledge. To show that the software will be useful in a variety of fields, three prototype applications have already been identified in the areas of medical imaging, automotive engineering and bioinformatics.
"We'll consider the project successful if users who currently find grid solutions too difficult find our solution more appealing," says KnowARC Project Leader Balázs Kónya. "We hope to have a first release of the redesigned ARC software by May of 2007, and then we'll bring in the applications."
The most important architectural vision of the project is creation of a middleware composed of elementary building blocks, such as compute and data storage components or special services that can be accessed either through Web or Web-communication encapsulated protocols. All software components will be easy to install and be available on a broad range of operating systems. The different software components will satisfy existing grid standards, and the KnowARC solutions will be interoperable with key European grid infrastructure initiatives.
Learn more at the KnowARC Web site.
—Oxana Smirnova, Lund University, Sweden and Peter Stefan, NIIF, Hungary
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