Computational Grids [1] have emerged as a distributed computing infrastructure for providing pervasive, ubiquitous access to a diverse set of resources ranging from highperformance computers (HPC), tertiary storage systems, large-scale visualization systems, expensive and unique instruments including telescopes and accelerators. One of the primary motivations for building Grids is to enable large-scale scientific research projects to better utilize distributed, heterogeneous resources to solve a particular problem or set of problems | Reprint from Concurrency and Computation Practice and Experience 2002 John Wiley Sons Ltd. Minor changes to the original have been made to conform with house style. 27 The Grid portal development kit Jason Novotny Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Berkeley California United States INTRODUCTION Computational Grids 1 have emerged as a distributed computing infrastructure for providing pervasive ubiquitous access to a diverse set of resources ranging from highperformance computers HPC tertiary storage systems large-scale visualization systems expensive and unique instruments including telescopes and accelerators. One of the primary motivations for building Grids is to enable large-scale scientific research projects to better utilize distributed heterogeneous resources to solve a particular problem or set of problems. However Grid infrastructure only provides a common set of services and capabilities that are deployed across resources and it is the responsibility of the application scientist to devise methods and approaches for accessing Grid services. Unfortunately it still remains a daunting task for an application scientist to easily plug into the computational Grid. While command line tools exist for performing atomic Grid operations a truly usable interface requires the development of a customized problem solving environment PSE . Traditionally specialized PSE s were developed in the form of higher-level client side tools that encapsulate a variety of distributed Grid operations such as transferring data executing simulations and post-processing or visualization of data across heterogeneous resources. A primary barrier in the widespread acceptance of monolithic client side tools is the deployment and configuration of specialized software. Grid Computing - Making the Global Infrastructure a Reality. Edited by F. Berman A. Hey and G. Fox 2003 John Wiley Sons Ltd ISBN 0-470-85319-0 658 JASON NOVOTNY Scientists and researchers are often required to download .
