Abstract

Grid computing aims at managing resources in a heterogeneous distributed environment. The Globus Toolkit provides a set of components that can be used to build applications that function in a grid computing system. Presently, applications are typically handcrafted either by using an Application Programming Interface (API) interacting through a set of command line interfaces, or by using a set of Java packages provided by the Java CoG Kit. Automating the application construction process, therefore, has not been a primary focus, but it represents a potentially significant software development achievement. The purpose of the work described in this paper is to automate the development of applications within the Globus Toolkit context by creating graphical workflows of applications using domain-specific modeling techniques. The approach can be summarized in the following interrelated tasks: (1) creation of graphical workflows to specify relationships among different components within an application; (2) automatic generation of code for managing the application using the corresponding workflows; and, (3) translation of the workflows into Java code that makes use of the Java CoG Kit, emphasizing its API. The expected impact of this effort, as is often the case in automating systems approaches, is a reduction of the development time involved in generating applications for the Globus Toolkit. An additional advantage is to provide a high level view for the construction of Grid applications using the Globus Toolkit that avoids some of the intricacies and accidental complexities documented for other (current) approaches. Furthermore, users need not learn how to use the Java CoG Kit nor the Globus Toolkit to develop Grid-enabled applications.