This short chapter summarizes the current status of Grid Computational and Programming environments. It puts the corresponding section of this book in context and integrates a survey of a set of 28 chapters gathered together by the Grid Computing Environment (GCE) group of the Global Grid Forum, which is being published in 2002 as a special issue of Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience. Several of the chapters here are extensions or reprints of those papers. | PART C Grid computing environments 20 Overview of Grid computing environments Geoffrey Fox 1 Dennis Gannon 1 and Mary Thomas2 Indiana University Bloomington Indiana United States 2 The University of Texas at Austin Austin Texas United States INTRODUCTION This short chapter summarizes the current status of Grid Computational and Programming environments. It puts the corresponding section of this book in context and integrates a survey of a set of 28 chapters gathered together by the Grid Computing Environment GCE group of the Global Grid Forum which is being published in 2002 as a special issue of Concurrency and Computation Practice and Experience. Several of the chapters here are extensions or reprints of those papers. We can define a GCE as a set of tools and technologies that allows users easy access to Grid resources and applications. Often it takes the form of a Web portal that provides the user interface to a multitier Grid application development stack but it may also be as simple as a GridShell that allows a user access to and control over Grid resources in the same way a conventional shell allows the user access to the file system and process space of a regular operating system. Grid Computing - Making the Global Infrastructure a Reality. Edited by F. Berman A. Hey and G. Fox 2003 John Wiley Sons Ltd ISBN 0-470-85319-0 544 GEOFFREY FOX DENNIS GANNON AND MARY THOMAS OVERALL CLASSIFICATION Grid Computing Environments can be classified in several different ways. One straightforward classification is in terms of the technologies used. The different projects differ in terms of languages used nature of treatment of objects if any use of particular technology such as Java servlets the Globus Toolkit or GridFTP and other implementation issues. Some of these issues are important for performance or architecture but often can look to the user as not so important. For instance there is a trend to use more heavily Java XML and Web Services but this will only
