The EU GridLab Project: A Grid Application Toolkit and Testbed

Recently, many projects based on grid technologies have been started worldwide. The European GridLab project represents one of the most integrated projects, joining together all of the core services of a grid middleware to build a framework to develop grid-aware applications. The primary aim of GridLab is to provide users and application developers with a simple and robust environment enabling them to produce applications that can exploit the full power and possibilities of grids. The GridLab project brings together computer and computational scientists from various application areas to design and implement a grid application toolkit (GAT), together with a set of novel grid services. The project will demonstrate the benefits of the GAT by developing and im- plementing real application scenarios, illustrating wild, exciting, new uses of grids. The GAT will contain independent modules for handling various aspects of grid programming, including simulation, performance and grid monitoring, resource brokering and selection, performance prediction, interac- tion with information servers, security, notifications, collaborative working, data handling, remote visualization, and remote application steering. This chapter reports the current status of the GridLab project, highlighting the GAT and the novel grid services that have been developed.