Using an End-To-End Demonstration in an Undergraduate Grid Computing Course

Mark A. Holliday and James Ruff, Dept of Mathematics and Computer ScienceWestern Carolina University

Barry WilkinsonDept of Computer ScienceUNC at Charlotte

ACMSE 2006Melbourne, FL12 March 2006

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Acknowledgements

Thank-you for financial support from Introducing Grid Computing into the

Undergraduate Curriculum, National Science Foundation, DUE 0410667, 2004-2006.

A Consortium to Promote Computational Science and High Performance Computing, University of North Carolina Office of the President, 2004-2006.

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Overview

What is Grid Computing? Background on the Courses The End-to-End Demonstration Conclusions For Further Information

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What is Grid Computing?

Grid computing is"coordinated resource sharing and problem

solving in dynamic, multi-institutional virtual organizations" (Foster, Kesselman, and Tuecke, 2001)

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What is Grid Computing?

Other approaches to wide-area distributed systems have been progressing concurrently

The Grid approach is converging with the Web Services approach– HTTP, XML– SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)– WSDL (Web Services Description Language)

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What is Grid Computing? (from Mark Baker, “Smoke and Mirrors: Tales of the Grid”, 28 October 2004)

Grid

Web

WSRF

OGSIGT2

GT1

HTTPWSDL, WS-*

WSDL 2, WSDM

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Background on the Courses

Grid computing has matured to the point that courses aimed at the undergraduate, upper-level computer science major are feasible and desirable

Two courses developed– Overview of Grid Computing– Intelligent Decision Making

• Using the Grid in an Application Domain

Both courses are multi-site

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Background on the Courses

Overview of Grid Computing course– Fall 2004 and Fall 2005– Instructors: Barry Wilkinson and Clayton Ferner

(UNCW)– 43/32 students at 8/9 universities

Intelligent Decision Making course– Spring 2005 and Spring 2006– Instructors: Mark Holliday, David Powell (Elon),

and Joel Hollingsworth (Elon)– 16/25 students at 3/6 universities

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Background on the Courses

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Background on the Courses

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The End-to-End Demonstration

Grids can be complex. It is easy to get lost in the details and

miss the overall picture. We need a simple, but complete,

example of a grid application. =>– End-to-End Demonstration

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The End-to-End Demonstration

Has all the parts of a realistic grid use grid portal user-developed grid service

– application grid client– application grid service

pre-defined grid service– remote job submission to multiple clusters

(across organization boundaries)– use computational and data resources on the

clusters

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Conclusions

Wide-area distributed systems with a foundation of HTTP and XML are developing and converging as web services and grids

Undergraduate courses for computer science majors in this area are becoming feasible and desirable

The End-to-End Demonstration is a useful resource for illustrating how a grid can be used in a simple but realistic manner

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For Further Information

http://cs.wcu.edu/~certauthority More End-to-End Demonstration Information

– more detailed slides– explanatory handout

Grid Computing Course Materials Website

Contact:holliday@wcu.edu