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Higher-Order Components for Grid Programming
Making Grids More Usable
Dünnweber, Jan, Gorlatch, Sergei
2009, XIII, 186 p. 104 illus., Hardcover
ISBN: 978-3-642-00840-5
http://www.springer.com/computer/communications/book/978-3-642-00840-5
A major challenge in grid computing remains the application software
development for this new kind of infrastructure. Grid application programmers
have to take into account several complicated aspects: distribution of data and
computations, parallel computations on different sites and processors,
heterogeneity of the involved computers, load balancing, etc. Grid programmers
thus demand novel programming methodologies that abstract over such technical
details while preserving the beneficial features of modern grid middleware.
For this purpose, the authors introduce Higher-Order Components (HOCs). HOCs
implement generic parallel/distributed processing patterns, together with the
required middleware support, and they are offered to users via a high-level
service interface. Users only have to provide the application-specific pieces
of their programs as parameters, while low-level implementation details, such
as the transfer of data across the grid, are handled by the HOCs. HOCs were
developed within the CoreGRID European Network of Excellence and have become an
optional extension of the popular Globus middleware. The book provides the
reader with hands-on experience, describing a broad collection of example
applications from various fields of science and engineering, including biology,
physics, etc. The Java code for these examples is provided online,
complementing the book. The expected application performance is studied and
reported for extensive performance experiments on different testbeds, including
grids with worldwide distribution.
The book is targeted at graduate students, advanced professionals, and
researchers in both academia and industry. Readers can raise their level of
knowledge about methodologies for programming contemporary parallel and
distributed systems, and, furthermore, they can gain practical experience in
using distributed software. Practical examples show how the complementary
online material can easily be adopted in various new projects.
Keywords:
* Component-Based Development
* Distributed Computing
* Distributed Resource Management and Scheduling
* Globus
* Grid and Cloud Computing
* Middleware
* Web Services
