The Globus Toolkit in CyberInfrastructure: Examples and Lessons

Convened by Lee Liming, University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory

The Globus Toolkit is one of the National Science Foundation’s major software development investments for CyberInfrastructure (CI). While Globus and similar investments have made significant contributions to CI initiatives (e.g., NEES, TeraGrid, LIGO, LEAD), constructing the CI for a community of scientists is more complicated than simply adopting one of these tools.

This half-day tutorial provides three case studies from successful CI projects and highlights the lessons learned from those experiences. Three challenging IT problems will be presented in the context of specific science projects. The tutorial will explore the science requirements, the technical approach taken in each solution, and the results. Reusable Grid technologies from the Globus Toolkit such as GridFTP, MyProxy, and GRAM will be introduced. Along the way, we will highlight the general lessons that these experiences provided and the implications for new CI projects.