Web-based online communities such as blogs, forums and scientific communities have become important places for people to seek and share expertise. Search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, Live etc. are not yet capable to address queries that require deep semantic understanding of the query or the document. Instead, it may be preferable to find and ask someone who has related expertise or experience on a topic. Web-based online communities are the places people often seek advice or help. Before an analysis of search capabilities for these communities can be done, we need to gather the data (questions and answers, social support or discussion, comments or advice, content rating, social relations, and so forth) that describe the communities. There is no universal standard data structure for the outline of user participation in these communities. Also, as these communities rarely interoperate, each typically only has access to its own social data and cannot benefit from other communities’ data. Extracting, aggregating and analyzing data from these communities for finding experts on a single framework is a challenging task. In this document, we present a Grid-enabled framework of expertise search (GREFES) engine, which utilizes online communities as sources for experts on various topics. We suggest an open data structure called SNML (Social Network Markup Language) to outline user participation in online communities. The architecture addresses major challenges in crawling of community data and query processing by utilizing the computational power and high bandwidth inherently available in the Grid. Our framework supports open APIs for third party providers or developers to build new solutions in order to get more user feedback to improve the system.

The Database Access and Integration Services Working Group (DAIS-WG) has submitted three specifications to the Open Grid Forum (OGF) recommendation track [WS-DAI, WS-DAIR, WS-DAIX]. These specifications define a basic set of interfaces, properties and patterns for service-based access to data. The core WS-DAI specification outlines a set of generic interfaces and properties that are common to most types of data access. These may then be extended to access specific types of data. For instance, the WS-DAIR and WS-DAIX specifications extend the base specification to provide access to relational and XML types of data respectively.

This document outlines and motivates a further extension to the WS-DAI family of specifications to provide access to RDF(S) data. This will define a standard mechanism for accessing RDF(S) data in a manner consistent with the framework defined by the WS-DAI core specification. The main outcome of this work will be two specifications that provide complementary ways for accessing RDF(S) data: by using the W3C defined SPARQL query language or through the use of ontological primitives.

This document motivates this work by presenting an overview of the role of RDF(S) in a grid context with several motivational use cases.

This document is an informal description of Use Cases and requirements for the OCCI Cloud API. Created by the Open Cloud Computing Interface working group. This document records the needs of Infrastructure-as-a-Service Cloud computing managers and administrators in the form of Use Cases. The Use Cases serve as the primary guide for the development of API requirements. The document is the first deliverable to demonstrate and validate the features of the Open Cloud Computing Interface.

This document describes a multi-server based namespace data management system for Resource Namespace Service (RNS), which is introduced in GFD 101. In this system, RNS can be accessed through a master node, which provides the standard interfaces and functions defined in GFD 101. When the master node receives the RNS request, it will dispatch the request to one of the slave nodes based on load balancing policy. Every slave node stores a copy of the namespace data and responses to the read request, such as list and query functions, while only one slave node responses to the write request, such as add, update and remove function. There is a data synchronization process to keep the data consistence on all the slave nodes. In this method, even though one or more slave servers failed, the RNS can also provide stable service. This multi-server based namespace data management system can improve the availability and scalability of RNS.

The Data Access and Integration Services (DAIS) Working Group have defined three proposed recommendations within the Open Grid Forum (OGF). The OGF process and requirements document (GFD.152) states that two independent interoperable implementations are required for a proposed recommendation to become a full OGF recommendation. This OGF experimental document reports on interoperability testing of two implementations of WS-DAIR (GFD.76) – one from the OGSA-DAI group at The University of Edinburgh and the other based on AMGA from KISTI. In addition, as the WS-DAIR proposed recommendation is an extension to WS-DAI (GFD.74), the testing process has encompassed both the WS-DAIR and WS-DAI proposed recommendations. The tests documented in this OGF experimental document establish that it is indeed possible to obtain client-based interoperability for these two implementations. However, as a result of this interoperation process a number of changes are recommended for the WS-DAI and WS-DAIR documents before they gain full recommendation status.

It is important to note that this document establishes a set of interoperability requirements between two or more implementations of the WS-DAI specifications, taking into account the criteria established in GFD.77. This document is not intended to establish a validation process to test the compliance of any particular implementation to any of the (proposed) DAIS recommendations.

The purpose of this document is to specify a protocol for accessing a Policy Decision Point (PDP) by a Grid Policy Enforcement Point (PEP) in order to obtain access control decisions containing obligations. The protocol is a profile of the SAML2.0 profile of XACMLv2 request/response contexts, tailored especially for grid use.

This document presents a specification for an authorization credential retrieval protocol based on the use of the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) and protocol as a format for requesting and retrieving attribute assertions.

This document provides a protocol for an authorization component to access an external credential validation service (CVS) prior to calling a policy decision point (PDP). The protocol is a profile of a SAML attribute assertion carried by WS-Trust.

This document describes the various components that make up the authorization decision function of a Grid service provider. It looks at the different ways in which the various components can be combined together, and data flows between the components. This document is for informational purposes only and is not intended to form a grid standard.

This is an OGF informational document outlining the need for, and some possible approaches to developing, a Professional Grid Certification Program. It is aimed at the stakeholders who might be interested in developing such a certification programme, including potential employers of certified Grid professionals as well as the certification and training industries and middleware and technology providers.

The document outlines a possible structure of a Certification Program along with some options for how to develop and sustain such an effort. Finally, some possible future directions are outlined in the Future work section.