KnowARC

Grid technologies over the past few years evolved rapidly from an academic peculiarity to a solid answer to problems of extended teams of users. Grid-based solutions are becoming critical tools in enriching wide collaborations, allowing their members to communicate and co-operate securely and reliably. While widely accepted technology standards are still in the process of being defined, several Grid solutions are already offering reliable services.

The KnowARC project aspires to improve and extend the existing state-of-the-art technology found in the Advanced Resource Connector (ARC) middleware, which provides a set of reliable, robust, non-intrusive, well-tested core services. KnowARC aims to significantly increase awareness and usage of such next generation ARC middleware. The resulting high performance and popular Grid solution will increase productivity in many areas of human activities through efficient resource and expert know-how sharing. ARC focuses on intensive computational tasks and associated security and data handling issues, and since it is powerful and efficient, yet simple to deploy, maintain and use, the KnowARC solution is expected to become widely accepted.

The vision of KnowARC is of an application expert sharing procedural knowledge with other members of the extended team by the creation of a specific software tool and associated data. The expert then uses Grid technology to create a know-how sharing environment, provides a characterisation of the field of application, specifies who is allowed to use it, and what kinds of data are available. The efficient clients will facilitate access to such environments. On a larger scale, the KnowARC Grid solution will foster the sharing of know-how between virtual organisations of providers and users.

The result of the project will be extension of ARC to be a standards-compliant, interoperable Grid software, offering foundations for know-how sharing services for business and society. KnowARC will transform ARC into coherent, functional next-generation Grid software of industrial quality, ready for deployment on a variety of computing platforms and included into various operating sys-tems distributions.

Grid-enabled Know-how Sharing Technology Based on ARC Services and Open Standards (KnowARC)

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