Speaker
Describe the scientific/technical community and the scientific/technical activity using (planning to use) the EGEE infrastructure. A high-level description is needed (neither a detailed specialist report nor a list of references).
The problem of managing and accessing huge datasets distributed across multiple sites
and stored into heterogeneous databases is common to several research areas.
We report some updates on the comparative evaluation of four tools to access different types of
data resources exposed onto Grids: G-DSE,
GRelC, OGSA-DAI and AMGA. A special attention is focused on the test in order to prove the scalability of each tool under high load.
Report on the experience (or the proposed activity). It would be very important to mention key services which are essential for the success of your activity on the EGEE infrastructure.
A test bed, which includes several sites belonging to the INFN and the SPACI
Grid Infrastructure, has been set up. In each site the instances of the G-DSE,
GRelC, OGSA-DAI and AMGA servers and client have been installed.
The test plan spans from very simple queries, use cases provided by the Bioinformatics and astrophysical communities, up to stress tests with multiple queries submitted simultaneously from different sites. Some tests are based also on very complex query coming from Public Administration requirements in order to test the flexibility of the tools.
The tool comparisons has been extended to the provided authentication mechanism for granting authorization.
The ability of the tools to allow conditional access depending on the user group, role and capability as derived from Virtual Organization Membership Service has also been investigated.
Describe the added value of the Grid for the scientific/technical activity you (plan to) do on the Grid. This should include the scale of the activity and of the potential user community and the relevance for other scientific or business applications
The Grid infrastructure has proven to be capable of providing storage and computing
resources for the computational needs of the modern research. However eScience
projects need also a way to access widespread databases within a computational grid
environment, through a set of secure, interoperable and efficient data grid services.
The evaluation test, reported here, addresses the needs of the bioinformatics
community engaged, through the BioinfoGRID (http://www.bioinfogrid.eu/) and the LIBI
(http://www.libi.it/) projects, in the adoption of a grid infrastructure layer at the
base of their research activities and of the Astrophysical community of the INAF
(Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica) (http://www.inaf.it/) interested to access data
in astronomical databases from the GRID,
The access to data from the Grid is also a crucial problem for the adoption of the
grid technology to provide services in public administration (EGG project).