NMI-R7 released

released June 14, 2005

Developed for the academic science and engineering community, the seventh release of the National Science Foundation Middleware Initiative (NMI-R7) builds on previous work to offer coherent development and access management technologies while concealing the complex management and security required in a heterogeneous cyberinfrastructure. NMI-R7 is available for downloading at http://www.nsf-middleware.org/.

NMI-R7 of the GRIDS Center Software Suite provides a baseline Grid software stack via conveniently installable binaries for eight Unix-based platforms, including for the first time, Mac OS X. The stack is flexible in that only the components of interest need to be configured. This reference stack was generated using the highly scalable build and test facilities also used to generate the Virtual Data Toolkit and individual software releases, such as Condor and the Globus Toolkit (GT). These software build and test facilities are available to e-Science projects for creating custom Grid middleware stacks that fit specific deployment requirements, or to assist with integrating, building, and testing software that is not already part of the suite.

Key components for this release are updated versions of Condor and the Globus Toolkit, including GT4's Web Services Resource Framework (WSRF). NMI-R7 includes two versions of the Storage Resource Broker Client: the latest available and a TeraGrid-compatible version.

The NMI-EDIT release features "Middleware End-to-End Diagnostics: An Introduction," an architecture document that describes a foundation for the diagnosis of resource-access problems encountered in virtual organizations, for example. The new release of the Shibboleth software, a federated authentication and authorization system, provides significant progress towards supporting the Federal E-Authentication Initiative and will enable researchers to use their institutional credentials to access online government services and resources.

In addition, seventeen NMI-EDIT tools were updated for NMI-R7, including Signet, a privilege management system, and Grouper, a set of group management tools. Also now available are final versions of LDAP directory schema and related documents, including the eduMember schema, which supports group-related information, and the eduCourse schema, which supports academic course information. The LocalDomainPerson Survey Results, also in NMI-R7, summarizes how higher-education institutions are using locally defined schemas and attributes in their enterprise LDAP directories.

The latest release from another NMI systems integrator team, the Open Grid Computing Environments (OGCE) consortium, provides a JSR 168-compliant portal platform and supports the GRIDS Center Software Suite via integration with the WSRF based on GT4. OGCE builds on the Grid-service specifications to enable the creation of Grid portals or Web-based user interfaces that simplify the process of identifying and accessing Grid resources.

 

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