[seek-dev] ecogrid and ogsa-dai

[Bing Zhu]

Matt,

You are right. For OGSA-DAI 2.5, I had some unexpected difficulty to install
OGSA-DAI in the
machine, dev.nceas.ucsb.edu. I guess this was because OGSA-DAI is a
combination
of too may software. (I am amazed by the way the OGSA-DAI team can put the
puzzles
together.) Meanwhile, I sent some help and technical questions to the
OGSA-DAI
team.

Then I moved to my laptop and installed the newly released OGSA-DAI 3.0. For
testing
the real OGSA-DAI connection with a database, I had to install the following
software.
   Tomcat
   OGSA (3.0 core distribution)
   MySql  (Ver 12.21 Distrib 4.0.14 for Windows)
   OGSA-DAI (3.0)
The installation went well. To test database access, I also spent one day to
get familiar
with MySql commands and created some test data in the MySql database running
in my laptop.
Then I was able to access the database via OGSA-DAI interface.

For both installation efforts, I spent a lot of time in reading OGSA-DAI's
technical papers
to understand the structures of DAI Service Group Registry (DAISGR), Grid
Data Service
Factory (GDSF) and Grid Data Service(GDS) and their configurations for
different data
sources and OGSA-DAI users, which has some change from OGSA-DAI 2.0 to 3.0.

One of the question I sent to OGSA-DAI team was how to integrate other data
source(s) into
OGSA-DAI framework and use OGSA-DAI interface to access that/those data
source(s). The answer from
OGSA-DAI team is that currently the OGSA-DAI access a data source via the
JDBC
driver for that data source. I forwarded this information to our seek-dev
mailing
list on July 18, 2003. This requirement restricts the way for other data
sources such
as SRB to use OGSA-DAI implementation unless SRB team builds a JDBC driver
which
I don't think worth trying. I am not sure if the Metacat has a JDBC driver.
If not, the conclusion
is clear that the current OGSA-DAI is not fit to serve as a common
implementation layer
for the heterogeneous data sources within SEEK project.

The OGSA-DAI implementation also forces users to use GSI for authentication.
Otherwise,
it is impossible for users to access data sources with different user name
and password
pairs. I will forward a mail from OGSA-DAI support team for my question
regarding this
issue to seek-dev today. (I noticed another mail from you this morning that
our SEEK team
is going to have our own CA's for using OGSA in SEEK.)

For the past months, I have also helped with Arun at SRB to partially
implement XQuery
with SRB through our own web service approach, which is called Matrix
project in SRB.
The SRB Matrix will allow us to have an web service based implementation and
therefore can be
easily integrated with other systems. I can do a demo with LTER data stored
inside SRB
in our coming SEEK meeting in Sept.

And we have been also considering building a SRB implementation for SEEK
QueryInterface.
For this, We (Metacat and SRB) can discuss it in our Sept meeting and work
together.

Sincerely,
Bing







-----Original Message-----
From: seek-dev-admin at ecoinformatics.org
[mailto:seek-dev-admin at ecoinformatics.org]On Behalf Of Matt Jones
Sent: Sunday, August 24, 2003 4:02 PM
To: Bing Zhu
Cc: seek-dev
Subject: [seek-dev] ecogrid and ogsa-dai


Bing,

I was in Santa Barbara this week and worked with Jing on the EcoGrid
stuff.  We are coming down to the wire.  Our next EcoGrid meeting is in
about 3 weeks, and I want to be sure all of the assigned tasks are done
by then.  It sounds like you've had some difficulty with the OGSA-DAI
install -- could you send a general update on its status, and an
assessment of whether it would actually be useful in the context of
SEEK?  My impression is that its not ready yet for our needs, but I'd
like to hear your thoughts on it.  I'm assuming that it is pretty
immature as you've been working on it for several months now, which is
about 3 times longer than I had expected it to take given that you are
100% time on SEEK.

Jing has GT3.0.1 installed on dev.nceas.ucsb.edu, and the CA is working
there.  We worked together on getting the Metacat client to run as an
OSGA service, and Jing and I will be getting the EcoGrid Query Interface
implemented as a grid service before our September meeting.  I think the
grid registry stuff will work out well for us, but I am a little worried
about the gt3 maturity level (I've had some trouble with it under redhat
8).  What's your experience there?

Thanks for the update,

Matt


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