eScience Comments Geoffrey Fox

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e-Science CommentsGeoffrey Fox

• December 11 2002

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Overall Comments

• Excellent Program with coordinated and
  application oriented approach
• Industry involvement, OGSA, Data Grid, GGF
  strategy good
• Regional/National centers good idea
• Quality appears generally high and competitive
  with international standards
• Greatest risk appears hype associated with both
  Grid and e-Science leading to unclear technical
  and political situation
• Both words do not have general agreement
• Suggest defining some safe metrics of success

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Some Suggestions I

• Grid architecture could be addressed in a broader
  fashion
• Currently OGSA organizes lower level
  infrastructure
• Add coordination in areas like portals (e.g. use
  portlets and develop application web services,
  GCE Research Group)
• There could be more discussion of what is Grid
  Software as well as what is Grid interface
  standards
• What will Globus, IBM, Oracle .. really deliver
  and when will it happen
• Globus 3 order of magnitude more complex than
  Globus 2
• IBM aimed at Enterprise and too complicated for
  most real people
• Need to support Federation of multiple Grid
  systems?

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Some Suggestions II

• Education could warrant a more explicit focus
• International Access Grid courses
• Develop Education Grids
• Revisit Computational Science curriculum/degree
  issues
• Use Grid to retarget research to education
• Other application areas include Space Grid and
  National Security / Critical Infrastructure
  (transportation, crisis management, biological
  epidemics) etc.
• Engineering versus Science tension