Project notes about the Towards tractable toolkits for the Grid: a plea for lightweight, usable middleware. Jonathan Chin, Peter V. Coveney, Centre for Computational Science, Department of Chemistry, University College London. RealityGrid 2003. http://www.realitygrid.org/lgpaper21.pdf

* Alun
Looks at significant barriers to widespread acceptance of Grid technology through the end-user community of application scientists.

  • Requirements include develop a simple, lightweight Grid middleware which is "good enough" for rapid adoption, rather than taking longer to develop a solution which will, supposedly, suit all needs.

  • Such a toolkit must be:
    • substantially more portable, lightweight, and modular in design;
    • produced in very close collaboration with application scientists;
    • sufficiently well-documented that end-users will be able to port existing codes to use Grid techniques with the minimum of hassle.