Birds of a Feather Session SC98, Orlando, Florida
Wednesday Nov, 11, 17:30-18:30
Room: 103A

BoF: Desktop Access to Remote Resources
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This BoF will discuss issues related to the design of an architecture, which makes a desktop access to remote resources possible. The term "remote resource" is defined to include:

* compute/communication resources (supercomputers, networked supercomputers and metacomputers, network of workstations, and workstations),
* data/information resources (databases, directories, dataservices), and

* compute/communication services (specialized problem solving and visualization environments).

Goal is to develop an architecture and components which can be reused by many projects in order to achieve simple access to the remote resources.

In terms of a Java Grande, this goal could lead to an agreed "Java framework for computing Services" while in CORBA it would termed a facility. In other words, one is defining a the distributed object structure of jobs, computers and related resources. We believe that a standard set of interfaces will help several fields including metacomputing (computational grids), problem solving environments including "seamless" interfaces, and performance engineering.


We present results from three working groups. These groups are

"Interface": Defining the interface to desktop access: the metacomputing API.
"User requirements": Analyzing the user requirements to the desktop access.
"Security": Enabling a secure desktop access to remote resources.

The security discussion is an example of the detailed considerations that will be given to needed services

We invite the research community to a participation in this collaborative effort.

Schedule
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1) Introduction
2) Report from the 1st Workshop Meeting
3) Discussion
4) Future plans and Meetings

Announcements: http://www-fp.mcs.anl.gov/~gregor/datorr