Appended below are: i) NOtes from the third SAGA session at GGF15 (Boston) ii) Modified charter -- signalling the beginning of the process of bit-flipping to SAGA-WG. We're aiming to forward to GFSG by 01 November, so please be sure to send in suggestions/correction well before. There will be more housekeeping issues related to the bit-flippin, e.g new Gridforge(?) location etc. GGF15 was a busy meeting for SAGA and there were many productive developments outside the formal (three) SAGA-RG sessions. Stay tuned for some general notes from GGF15. ===== SAGA-RG Seesion 3 Notes ====== 0. Agenda Bashing 1. Revised Charter & Milestones. 2. Requirement Documents 3. F2F at SC05 4. API Strawman Discussion: - Task Model (revisit) - sessions? - security? 5. AOB Chaired by Andre, Shantenu Thilo (saga-notetaker-in-chief), Dieter Kranzlmueller (AD), Pascal and Ninf-G/NAREGI representative. Shantenu and Andre presented the revised "Charter and Milestones" , required to flip the bit to a WG. The session was almost entirely devoted to discussing the revised "Charter and Milestones". Revised document essentially reflects the discussion. Deadline for comments on "Charter and Milestones" was left to chairs to determine. DEADLINE FOR COMMENTS/CRITICISM/MODIFICATIONS SET TO BE ********* 01 NOVEMBER, 2005. ************** In the last five minutes, it was formally agreed to have a SAGA face-to-face at SC05 and the "Task Model" was revisited -- based upon some informal discussions between Andre, Chris Smith and Shantenu. Email by Andre to be sent to the mailing list soliciting wider response to the modified task model. - Group did not get to discussing sessions and security, as charter revision discussions took up longer than expected. Appended below the Revised Charter [saga-cvs initial version 1.1] [Please note request for comments is 01 November] ======= Prosposed Charter for SAGA-WG ================= Informational Section --------------------- Area: Applications [Standards] Name of group: Simple API for Grid Applications Acronym: SAGA-WG Type of group: Working Group (WG) Chairs: Tom Goodale goodale@cct.lsu.edu Shantenu Jha s.jha@ucl.ac.uk Andre Merzky andre@merzky.net Secretaries: TBD Email list: saga-wg@ggf.org Web page: http://forge.ggf.org/projects/saga-wg/ Charter: ------- Focus/Purpose: ------------- Many application developers wish to make use of the exciting possibilities opened up by the advent of the Grid. Application developers, however, have their own agendas to pursue and often cannot spare the time or resources to fully investigate the vast wealth of Grid technologies and APIs which currently exist. They would rather be presented with a simple API close to the programming paradigms and interfaces they are used to. For example, the process of copying of a remote file may involve interaction with a replica location service, a data transport service, a resource management service, and a security service. It may involve communication via LDAP/LDIF, GRAM, HTTP, and GSI, as protocols or protocol extensions. A Fortran application programmer, however, wants to see a call very much like: call fileCopy (source, destination) Although this example is simplified, it illustrates the motivation for our work. The APIs specified by this WG will deliver a similar level of abstraction for a range of basic operations which need to be grid aware. The precise set of operations is to be decided by the WG based upon application requirements and use cases; examples of such operations may be file access, job submission, monitoring or steering. The group will lower the barrier for application developers to make use of the grid by providing a small, consistent API for the operations of interest, the Simple API for Grid Applications (SAGA). Scope: ----- The proposed API specifically targets applications, which aim to take advantage of some of the features that the Grid offers. The scope of the API is open to all application areas -- scientific and non-scientific. The scope is primarily defined by the Use Cases received; but will also reflect the areas of expertise of active members of the group. Simplicity and conciseness will be the governing principles. Currently the use cases received are from scientific application areas and are collected in the "SAGA Use Case document" (http:// i will add later). The API targets developers of applications who wish to grid enable their applications whilst spending as little time as possible learning new paradigms. Such developers typically wish to devote their time to their own goals and minimise the time spent coding infrastructure functionality. The API will insulate application developers from middleware. The specification of services and the protocols to interact with them is out of the scope of the WG. Rather, the API seeks to hide the detail of any service infrastructures that may or may not exist to implement the functionality that the application developer needs. The WG will, however, actively liase with all grid-middleware groups within the GGF to ensure compatability. The WG will continue to identify projects outside GGF with similar API-focus and goals, and will seek their input in the development of the API and its implementation. The WG will provide detailed examples and cook-book. Goals: ------ The SAGA-WG is the logical evolution of the SAGA-RG, which produced the informational document ("SAGA Use-Case Document") and did preliminary work on the "SAGA Requirements Document". The main goal of the WG is the creation of an API specification as a GGF standard recommendation. On the road to that specification, SAGA-WG will build upon the SAGA-RG documents and produce the following: * Informational Document: "Requirements document" - define exact scope of API - define target user groups for API - define programming languages to be supported - define organisation of API documents (e.g. one per subsystem or language, or one complete document) * Informational Document: "SAGA compatability with GGF middleware" This document will survey the compatability of SAGA reference implementations with underlying models of grid-middleware including, but not confined to OGSA. * Recommendation Document: "SAGA-API Specification" The SAGA API specification. Milestones: ----------- GGF16: Presentation of "Requirements document" Submit Informational Document "SAGA Compatability with GGF middleware" SAGA API Specification pre-v1.0 GGF17: Submission of SAGA API Specification v1.0 Implementation details review. GGF18: Work commences on extending the functional scope of SAGA (v2.0) GGF19: Present Draft Language Bindings (C++/Java/) -- Shantenu Jha, Research Fellow Centre for Computational Science http://www.realitygrid.org University College London (UCL) PGP Key ID 0x78F823E6 s dot jha at ucl dot ac dot uk +44 (0) 20-7679-5300