Grid Transactions RG - Charter

Group Leadership

Chair: Torsten Steinbach (IBM, Germany)
Co-Chair: tbn
Secretary: tbn

Goals

The goal of this RG is to investigate how to apply transaction management (TM) techniques to Grid systems.

Conventional ACID transactions are most likely not applicable in grid systems as they are proposed by GGF working groups. There are application areas that might not need transaction support, e.g. warehousing, which involves read only access to data. A lot of other grid applications however would benefit from, if not require, transactional support. A common grid transaction service would contribute a useful building block for professional grid systems.

This research group is trying to identify and verify possible grid transaction types as well as potential technology to implement them. If required a strategy for according specifications will be worked out with respect to the GGF.

This RG will provide a forum to track Grid transaction community activities and advise the Grid community on the application of TM technologies in Grid applications and infrastructure, to identify case studies and share good practice.

Projected Tasks

1. Identify and document the requirements of TM within a Grid setting.
2. Identify appropriate existing transaction techniques and specifications (e.g. WS-Coordination) that match these requirements.
3. Evaluate the need for new TM specifications and propose a strategy to create them.
4. Provide a forum to discuss and share insights of Grid transaction management.
5. Work with other RG and WG to both push Grid transactions, to offer a service of expertise and to ensure that TM meets the requirements of other Grid specifications
6. Operate a community web portal.

Milestones

1. Produce an informational paper that explains the requirements of Grid transaction management and discusses the possible approaches of implementation.
2. Run a workshop on Grid transaction management that reviews the paper and refines the further “Grid Transaction Roadmap".
3. Create a WG on Grid Transaction Services that would work out architectural specifications on how to implement and/or integrate transaction management services in a Grid environment.
4. Review of Grid transaction management activity

Lifetime

This RG has an indefinite life time. We suggest a review point after 1 year.

Web page maintained by Torsten Steinbach, torsten@data-grid.org
last updated February 16 2004.