This chapter presents aspects of the UK e-Science communities’ plans for generic Grid middleware. In particular, it derives from the discussions of the UK Architecture Task Force [1]. The UK e-Science Core Programme will focus on architecture and middleware development in order to contribute significantly to the emerging Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA) [2]. This architecture views Grid technology as a generic integration mechanism assembled from Grid Services (GS), which are an extension of Web Services (WS) to comply with additional Grid requirements. . | 7 Rationale for choosing the Open Grid Services Architecture Malcolm Atkinson National e-Science Centre Edinburgh Scotland United Kingdom INTRODUCTION This chapter presents aspects of the UK e-Science communities plans for generic Grid middleware. In particular it derives from the discussions of the UK Architecture Task Force 1 . The UK e-Science Core Programme will focus on architecture and middleware development in order to contribute significantly to the emerging Open Grid Services Architecture OGSA 2 . This architecture views Grid technology as a generic integration mechanism assembled from Grid Services GS which are an extension of Web Services WS to comply with additional Grid requirements. The principal extensions from WS to GS are the management of state identification sessions and life cycles and the introduction of a notification mechanism in conjunction with Grid service data elements SDE . The UK e-Science Programme has many pilot projects that require integration technology and has an opportunity through its Core Programme to lead these projects towards adopting OGSA as a common framework. That framework must be suitable for example it must support adequate Grid service interoperability and portability. It must also be Grid Computing - Making the Global Infrastructure a Reality. Edited by F. Berman A. Hey and G. Fox 2003 John Wiley Sons Ltd ISBN 0-470-85319-0 200 MALCOLM ATKINSON populated with services that support commonly required functions such as authorisation accounting and data transformation. To obtain effective synergy with the international community that is developing Grid standards and to best serve the United Kingdom s community of scientists it is necessary to focus the United Kingdom s middleware development resources on a family of GS for which the United Kingdom is primarily responsible and to deliver their reference implementations. The UK e-Science and computing science community is well placed to contribute substantially to .
