Flavia, Information Services -------------------- I just finished reading your presentation 'WLCG Information Officer' at http://indico.cern.ch/getFile.py/access?contribId=2&sessionId=0&resId=0&materialId=slides&confId=83604 Inside the EGDI project http://edgi-project.eu/ integrating Service Grids (such as WLCG) and Desktop Grids (such as SZDG or IberCivis), I am working on standardization. In particular, I consider that an IS (Information System) permitting providers to publish information and clients to discover information is the mandatory foundation for any distributed data processing infrastructure (Grid). Moreover, standardized interface about data model and protocol for information providers and client queries is mandatory for interoperation between grids such as EGI, OSG, Desktop Grids, ... Therefore, I am member of the OGF GLUE Working Group http://forge.gridforum.org/sf/projects/glue-wg Other involved parties ---------------------- For interoperation, I suggest you to add following stakeholders to your list of 'Other involved parties' : - OGF GLUE, - the EC-funded DCI projects (EDGI, EGI-Inspire, EMI, IGE, StatusLab, Venus-C), - University of Chicago/ANL http://forge.ogf.org/sf/go/doc16100 - Naregi-Renkei, which is currently using CIM. WLCG Information Service ------------------------ The current WLCG Information Service is the BDII based on the GLUE 1.3 schema and bootstrapped with the GOCDB https://goc.gridops.org/ and the CIC https://cic.gridops.org/ Thank you very much for having gathered the opinion of the 4 LCH experiments. Although it is a pity that the 4 LCH experiments do not really trust the WLCG Information Service yet, it is very important that IS designers, developers and integrators know this distrust, in order to search for the real reasons, and to carefully fix all issues. Below are some issues which I know, and proposals for solutions : - Accuracy of published information (in particular storage capacity) : The solution is to take into account 'information provider code' as real software, which must be designed using the best practices of software engineering, must have an installation manual, and must be deployed on all sites using the best practices of grid operation. When an adequate 'information provider' exists and has an adequate installation manual, sites publishing inaccurate information should be blamed. - Relevance and lifetime of published information : Among the various items of information published inside the BDII, users need to know which items they can trust and for how long. This is clearly a requirement for a document (or wiki page) containing a table describing the most relevant items and their probable lifetime. Moreover, it is probably the role of the WLCG Information Officer (yourself) to write down and publish this table. - Rigid implementation of GLUE 1.3 (unless it has already been fixed) : As far as I know, inside a single 'Grid Site' modeled by 'GlueSite' and 'GlueCluster', it would be useful to model each set of machines having same physical characteristics as a separate 'GlueSubCluster', but this is difficult to achieve because installation software does NOT support this completely yet. The solution would be to improve the installation software. - Query language : I am an experienced programmer in various languages, but I assess that building LDAP queries to extract useful information is difficult. A (perhaps restricted) SQL interface would be much easier to use, and there are many software developers and even users who already have a little experience with SQL. - Bad terminology by GLUE 1.3 : A 'Job Queue' is modeled by a 'GlueCE', and a 'Grid CE' is modeled by a 'GlueSubCluster'. Which user would be happy with that ? The solution is GLUE 2.0, where a 'Job Queue' is modeled by a 'ComputingEndpoint', and a 'Grid CE' is modeled by a 'ComputingResource'. Do not hesitate to provide answers or ask for precisions. Best regards. ----------------------------------------------------- Etienne URBAH LAL, Univ Paris-Sud, IN2P3/CNRS Bat 200 91898 ORSAY France Tel: +33 1 64 46 84 87 Skype: etienne.urbah Mob: +33 6 22 30 53 27 mailto:urbah@lal.in2p3.fr -----------------------------------------------------