Portal and Workflow in Grid Computing: From Application Integration to Service Integration - Grid Computing: Infrastructure, Service, and Applications - page 284

advanced tooling needed to build l exible, SOA-based solutions. IBM also
offers a scheme, namely the IBM Academic Initiative [49], for academic
and research institutes. Members of the IBM Academic Initiative can have
the latest technology and majority of IBM software to use for free, which
includes the IBM WebSphere portal.

11. 2 . 5.11 A Comparison Matrix of Grid Portal Tools and Technologies

Having surveyed the major grid portal development tools, frameworks, and
components, a comparison matrix table is produced as shown in Table 11.1 .
The evaluation criteria include: (1) JSR-168 compliant, (2) WSRP compliant, (3)
provision of grid-specii c portlets, (4) open source, (5) usage status, (6) perfor-
mance, and (7) supported services. The table has revealed that

1. GridSphere has been widely used for grid-enabled portal devel-
opment. GridSphere itself provides grid-specii c portlets. The
main disadvantage of the current version is that it does not sup-
port WSRP.

2. Other open-source portal frameworks and portlet containers,
such as uPortal, liferay, eXo, and Jetspeed-2, are also appropriate
for grid-enabled portal development. Although they do not
directly provide grid-specii c portlets, the existing open-source
JSR-168 grid portlets (e.g., OGCE, GridPort) can be reused or new
grid portlets need to be developed.

3. For developing commercial grid portals, the toolkit of the IBM
WebSphere portal would be a good choice. Likewise, although the
WebSphere portal itself does not provide grid-specii c portlets,
the existing JSR-168 grid portlets can be reused or new grid port-
lets need to be developed. Under the IBM Academic Initiative,
academic and institutional researchers can use the IBM WebSphere
portal for free.

4. OGCE provides a set of grid-enabled portlets that can be used to
create grid portals. GridPort toolkit has now become part of OGCE.

11.3
Grid-based computation usually requires dei ning sequences of activities
such as data gathering, metascheduling, job submission, i le transfer,
analysis and simulation, and data harvesting. This determines a need for
process automation, which can integrate the activities required for
grid-based computation without human interaction. Workl ow technology

Workflow to Integrate Services for Process Automation