Abstract

Advances in networking technologies will soon make it possible to use the global information infrastructure in a qualitatively different way—as a computational resource as well as an information resource. This idea for an integrated computation and information resource called the Computational Power Grid has been described by the recent book entitled The Grid: Blueprint for a New Computing Infrastructure [18]. The Grid will connect the nation’s computers, databases, instruments, and people in a seamless web, supporting emerging computation-rich application concepts such as remote computing, distributed supercomputing, tele-immersion, smart instruments, and data mining. To realize this vision, significant scientific and technical obstacles must be overcome. Principal among these is usability. Because the Grid will be inherently more complex than existing computer systems, programs that execute on the Grid will reflect some of this complexity. Hence, making Grid resources useful and accessible to scientists and engineers will require new software tools that embody major advances in both the theory and practice of building Grid applications. The goal of the Grid Application Development Software (GrADS) Project is to simplify distributed heterogeneous computing in the same way that the World Wide Web simplified information sharing

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