Grid application meta-repository system

Abstract

As one of the most popular forms of distributed computing technology, Grid brings together different scientific communities that are able to deploy, access, and run complex applications with the help of the enormous computational and storage power offered by the Grid infrastructure. However as the number of Grid applications has been growing steadily in recent years, they are now stored on a multitude of different repositories, which remain specific to each Grid. At the time this research was carried out there were no two well-known Grid application repositories sharing the same structure, same implementation, same access technology and methods, same communication protocols, same security system or same application description language used for application descriptions. This remained a great limitation for Grid users, who were bound to work on only one specific repository, and also presented a significant limitation in terms of interoperability and inter-repository access. The research presented in this thesis provides a solution to this problem, as well as to several other related issues that have been identified while investigating these areas of Grid. Following a comprehensive review of existing Grid repository capabilities, I defined the main challenges that need to be addressed in order to make Grid repositories more versatile and I proposed a solution that addresses these challenges. To this end, I designed a new Grid repository (GAMRS – Grid Application Meta-Repository System), which includes a novel model and architecture, an improved application description language and a matchmaking system. After implementing and testing this solution, I have proved that GAMRS marks an improvement in Grid repository systems. Its new features allow for the inter-connection of different Grid repositories; make applications stored on these repositories visible on the web; allow for the discovery of similar or identical applications stored in different Grid repositories; permit the exchange and re-usage of application and application related objects between different repositories; and extend the use of applications stored on Grid repositories to other distributed environments, such as virtualized cluster-on-demand and cloud computing