The GSML tool suite: a supporting environment for user-level programming in grids

The grid technology emerges for the need of resource sharing and cooperating in wide areas. In the OGSA framework, grid resources are abstracted as grid services in order to hide their distributed and heterogeneous properties. A grid service can be seen as a server-side interface that defines the access fashion of grid resources. To explore and utilize grid resources effectively and conveniently, we propose a user-level programming language called Grid Service Markup Language (GSML) to help end users describe their usage of grid services. The base of GSML is the CAM model, which abstracts the grid as a computer with active memories. When designing the GSML, we define several GSML tags to indicate the structure, the operation element of GSML pages and relations between operation elements. The key feature of GSML is using a special tag to mark up grid services. To support the running of a GSML page, we design a set of tools called the GSML tool suite to compose, execute and deploy GSML pages. In order to provide the physical-resource-independent property for GSML, we also propose the concepts of virtual resource space and community. As a user-level programming language, the GSML can be a complement to OGSA framework. A prototype to prove our concepts is also presented.