Earth science test suites to evaluate grid tools and middleware—examples for grid data access tools

Abstract

The Earth Science (ES) community has three major IT related concerns: Modeling (computing intensive), exploitation of datasets, and production of large shared datasets. All could be accomplishable using Grid. Different Grid middleware solutions exist and are being developed. In DEGREE (Dissemination and Exploitation of Grids in Earth sciencE) the aim was to disseminate and promote uptake of Grid in ES and to create a bridge between ES and Grid communities. DEGREE identified key ES requirements and has disseminated these to Grid projects, evaluated Grid middleware tools and standards regarding ES requirements and provided feedback to Grid developers. In order to convey requirements to the Grid community, test suite specifications were developed. Test suites provide real applications for testing functional and non-functional aspects of Grid, contrary to typical whiteboard tests or use cases. In this paper the GOMEVAL test suite is explained in detail and the results obtained are discussed.

A roadmap for a dedicated Earth Science Grid platform

“…DEGREE addressed three main topics: data management, job management, and portals to integrate Earth science and Grid tools. The survey results, which are published on the DEGREE web site, were discussed with Grid project developers and applications proposed to test critical functionalities (Som de Cerff et al 2009). Following those surveys and identification of the gaps, one of the main outcomes of DEGREE is a roadmap (Cossu et al 2008) aimed to set out the key steps needed for the ES 1 http://www.gmes.info/.…”