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Grid Computing Resource Records

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There is a consortium of supercomputing and grid computing orgs. at http://www.gridforum.org/L_WG/wg.htm

I have been involved a bit, in their semantics describing resources bought and sold, you might say..

Today, and I'm not entirely sure why we're talking about a syntax in a semantics effort but the following thread existed,
Hope you enjoy,
todd


Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 16:27:54 -0800
To: ur-wg@gridforum.org
From: Todd Boyle
Subject: Re: Proposal that the usage record format be specified in XML 

XML? That depends how far you go with it. The entire W3C platform, or
just XML Schema? As Uche Ogbuche said this month in adtmag,
http://www.adtmag.com/article.asp?id=6965 

The XPath 2.0 and XSLT 2.0 drafts ..build in extensive facilities for
handling WXSDT. Not by coincidence, these specifications are several
times larger and more complex than the 1.0 generation of specifications.
This added complexity has spurred the bohemians to arms. They are
dismayed to see some of the most useful and successful XML technologies
compromised by a desire for high-class amenities that not everyone
wants, or wants to pay for.

The bohemians argue that the XPath and XSLT committees are out of
control, and that, at the very least, added facilities for WXSDT should
be separated into optional modules...... Certainly, if you want your
data to outlast your code, and to be more portable to unforeseen, future
uses, you would do well to lower your own level of class consciousness.
Strong data typing in XML tends to pigeonhole data to specific tools,
environments and situations. This often raises the total cost of
managing that data.

No doubt you're more proficient at the network layer than I am. But
RADIUS has been out there for so many years that the security and
processing bugs are pretty well beaten out of it by now. DIAMETER and
other specs provide extensibility.
http://www.ledgerism.net/IETFaccounting.htm 
http://www.diameter.org 

There is also potentially AS2, Abstract... 
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-ediint-as2-11.txt 

...This document describes how to exchange structured business data securely using HTTP transport for Electronic Data Interchange, (EDI - either the American Standards Committee X12 or UN/EDIFACT, Electronic Data Interchange for Administration, Commerce and Transport), XML or other data used for business to business data interchange. The data is packaged using standard MIME content-types. Authentication and privacy are obtained by using Cryptographic Message Syntax (S/MIME) or OpenPGP security body parts. Authenticated acknowledgements make use of multipart/signed replies to the HTTP POST requests........

EDI totally dominates business exchange between enterprise with 500,000
sites; altogether all of the XML variants have probably 5,000 and those
are all *completely* hidden! So insecure....

The nature of accounting itself is static. An economic resource, under
the control of one party, flows out from their control and into the
control of another party. The representation of these facts is not very
challenging inasmuch as both parties must have somehow bootstrapped
themselves to a common definition of what they bought or sold,
previously to the execution. (in ebXML it has emerged, the Economic
Event is little more than a boolean, whereas, all the Who, What, When,
Where is determined at the commitment phase.)

If it is not your goal to assist or participate in the discovery,
negotiation or commitment stages of the exchange of Grid resources then
IMO you can afford to keep it simple.


In enterprise software the GL phase ended around 1990. Enterprise
software integrates backward, progressively earlier stages of the
business process, recall, the era of "Enterprise Resource Planning"
(ERP) attempting to provide automation support for planning and
commitment phases, and now, "Customer Relationship Management" (CRM)
reaching yet earlier phases of modeling/predicting customers/potential
customers' behavior, sometimes integrating with customer, etc. etc.
For these huge challenges, platform vendors have deployed millions of
developers and filled the pages of 100's of magazines. Microsoft alone
spends $5.2 Billion/year on R&D. Grid WG may not need web services or
even XML, for resource accounting unless you're truly planning to be a
part of a much broader business process management.

Till then perhaps, another alternative is use only such features of XML
syntax as can be transformed in both directions with AS1 or AS2?
skipping all the semantic web stuff, XPath, etc.

Respectufly
TOdd
Todd Boyle 9745-128th Ave NE Kirkland WA 
International Accounting Services, LLC www.ledgerism.net  
425-827-3107 editor, AR/AP everywhere  www.arapxml.net


At 02:40 PM 12/11/2002, Jackson, Scott M wrote: We have to come to a
decision relatively soon on the usage record format. Two ideas have been
proffered: XML and ASN.1.
[..snip]

* Todd Boyle http://www.ledgerism.net/
* tboyle@rosehill.net Kirkland WA (425) 827-3107
* XML accounting, web ledgers, BSPs, ASPs, whatever it takes