> In my view that's exactly what a grid is supposed to do - not absolutely
> identical, but similar enough that a job can run anywhere without
> needing special treatment for each site. Of course, it may indeed be
> impossible, in which case we will fail.
Good intention, but you do just that: force a special treatment upon
every site! And do not even disclose what is in that big black box they
have to swallow.
> Grids are supposed to help users, the complexity and heterogeneity
> should be hidden by the middleware and not left to applications to deal
That shouldn't be happening on the expence of resourse owners, guess
this is what this thread is all about. Otherwise users will be left with
only a handful of resources.
> with - that's why it's called middleware. If the installations at
> different sites are all different then big VOs like the LCG experiments
> will just implement everything themselves (we already see this) and
What you see happening is because:
(a) many things are not implemented by the Grid, or implemented in an
unsatisfactory manner, and
(b) many sites did a "typical installation" without realizing what does
it imply - especially with storage.
This thread shows that there are conscious sysadmins around who are not
spoiled by Microsoft methods like in (b).
> small VOs will give up. What's the point of the middleware developers
> writing (say) data management code if it's only installed at 20% of
> sites and "portability" means that every application has to have its own
> data management code to deal with the other 80%?
Nobody's questioning credibility or validity of a data management code
(wish it will be actually written some day). The point is, sysadmins are
paid to know what is installed on their facilities, and why (this
includes VO-specific s/w, btw). After all, they might come with a better
solution, saving VOs and developers many troubles. If there is a service
that is needed only by ATLAS, but the site thinks it is a security
hazard or an unbearable load, this service should not be installed. To
prevent ATLAS jobs ending up at such a site, the site will *not*
advertise ATLAS runtime environment tag. As simple as that. Everybody's
happy.
Oxana
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