E-Science on the Grid: Toward a Dynamic E-Science Automation with XML and Workflow Techniques

摘要

Grid computing, which can be characterized as large-scale distributed resource sharing and cooperation, is becoming a mainstream technology in distributed computing. Workflow, originally the automation of a business process, can take advantage of the grid-computing environment to provide dynamic scientific computing task automation for e-science. In this paper, we discuss the idea of using XML and workflow techniques to have various grid services cooperate for scientific computing by implementing e-science automation. The dynamic grid service cooperation can be plugged into a workflow to fulfill a specific computational operation. A workflow can be split into sub-workflows to be executed in different organizations. To achieve a reliable and high-performance e-science computation, duplicate scheduling and N-out-of-M scheduling are used to dispatch sub-workflows. XML is chosen as message communication format, which enables grid agents to carry, switch, and exchange domain-specific XML interpreters so that they can switch roles to participate in different partnerships or collaborations. Via the workflow and XML techniques, the cooperation of grid organizations and the sharing of grid resources are capable of supporting automated large-scale dynamic e-science.