The EGEE programme has developed an open source middleware distribution, named gLite, which comprises security services, information and monitoring services, data services, job management services and helper services. In EGEE-III, the JRA activity will maintain the middleware and evolve the key services needed for running the infrastructure adhering to open standards where feasible and focusing on production needs. This will require the parallel drive towards middleware which meets the needs of both the production service and the applications. The JRA activity is closely linked to the EGEE-III service and networking activities, providing middleware components to SA3 for inclusion into the gLite middleware distribution, to be deployed by SA1. The application requirements provided by NA4 drive the functional evolution of the middleware. Standardisation efforts as well as collaborations with software industry are of particular importance as this will allow, in the mid-term, to enrich EGEE’s middleware with industry strength components. For instance, the EGEE-II Business Associates programme attracted Platform Computing as a member and has spawned productive discussions with The Mathworks and Hitachi. These interactions will be continued in EGEE-III.

There is one EGEE-III Joint Research Activity:

• JRA1: Middleware Engineering

which is summarised below. The figure illustrates interactions between JRA1 and SA activities.



JRA1: Middleware Engineering

The overall goal of JRA1 is to provide and maintain selected middleware services of the gLite distribution satisfying the basic requirements of users in terms of functionality and performance as well of operations in terms of manageability and deployability. While pursuing this goal attention will be paid to evolving the services towards interoperable solutions, wherever possible by adhering to established standards. In particular JRA1 will focus on OGF developed standards and will contribute its experience in developing production strength services via the OGF-EUROPE project. The services will also evolve with respect to multi-platform support according to the decisions of the Technical Management board (TMB) in close collaboration with SA3.

The gLite middleware is structured into application independent Grid Foundation Middleware, covering the security infrastructure, information, monitoring and accounting systems, access to compute resources (compute element) and access to storage resources (storage element). These foundation services are complemented by higher level Grid Services such as resource brokers, data catalogs, replication systems, etc. The focus of JRA1 will be laid on providing the essential Grid foundation services needed for the operation of EGEE as well as a few selected higher level services that have been identified essential for EGEE’s user communities in the previous phases of the EGEE programme.

JRA1 will specifically deal with the following services:

Foundation services

• Security infrastructure. The security middleware comprises all the necessary components to define and enforce policies within VOs as well as those needed by the resource provider (i.e. between VOs). In particular, resource access control, resource access auditing and VO membership management will be provided as part of an integrated security infrastructure. Existing gLite components will be maintained. The work will focus on the development of authorisation services, to provide a unique framework for policy definition and enforcement, auditing, and interoperability with other authentication and authorisation infrastructures. This work will be based on the experience developed with current gLite components. Support for SAML-based attributes will be progressively extended to more services.
• Information system, monitoring and accounting. Information published by the various services on the resources they control must be accessible to other services in a dependable and timely manner. This includes the definition of the schema of the information and a simple interface for service discovery. The work will concentrate on the maintenance of the services currently in use on the EGEE production infrastructure and on the development and adoption of the GLUE 2.0 schema in collaboration with OGF. Tools for infrastructure monitoring are being developed and maintained by SA1. The further development of a basic monitoring and messaging/notification infrastructure inside JRA1 is thus no longer of strategic importance and will be stopped as a funded activity. Nevertheless the tools developed for this purpose during the previous phases of the project may be useful to certain applications and will be supported on a best-effort basis. The accounting infrastructure will be maintained by the SA1 activity.
• Computing Element. The Computing Element is a set of services that provide homogenous, managed, and secure access to heterogeneous, remote computing fabrics. It provides structured and secure mechanisms to allow higher level services or application clients to submit and control jobs. The activity will concentrate on the maintenance of the WS-I based compute element developed during the previous phases of the project. The plug-ins to interface to various batch systems are maintained by the SA3 activity. Attention will be paid to interoperation with other infrastructures where possible via the adoption of common standards like the BES and JSDL standards as defined by the OGF.
• Storage Element. The Storage Element is a set of services that provide access to storage resources. While relying on externally provided storage systems offering an SRM interface, POSIX-like I/O and mechanisms for the management of the service have to be provided. Particular attention will be paid in the management of storage classes (disk-based, tape-based or hybrid) and of data persistency (temporary, semi-permanent, permanent).

Higher level Grid services

• Job services. Even though jobs may be submitted directly to compute elements, a general purpose workload management system is provided as part of the gLite distribution. It includes the ability to do resource brokering, input and output handling, automatic resubmissions on behalf of the users in case of failures and tools to track the status of the jobs during their life. A system that provides a long term archive of job information with data mining capabilities developed during the previous phases of EGEE will be made available via the RESPCT program and best-effort support will be provided by the developers.
• Data Management services. In addition to basic data management client tools and libraries, higher level tools are provided as part of the gLite distribution. This includes a reliable asynchronous file transfer system, a simple file and replica catalogue and support for secure data management and data encryption.