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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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

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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.