Recent ARC developments: Through modularity to interoperability

The Advanced Resource Connector (ARC) middleware introduced by NorduGrid is one of the basic Grid solutions used by scientists worldwide. While being well-proven in daily use by a wide variety of scientific applications at large-scale infrastructures like the Nordic DataGrid Facility (NDGF) and smaller scale projects, production ARC of today is still largely based on conventional Grid technologies and custom interfaces introduced a decade ago. In order to guarantee sustainability, true cross-system portability and standards-compliance based interoperability, the ARC community undertakes a massive effort of implementing modular Web Service (WS) approach into the middleware. With support from the EU KnowARC project, new components were introduced and the existing key ARC services got extended with WS technology based standard-compliant interfaces following a service-oriented architecture. Such components include the hosting environment framework, the resource-coupled execution service, the re-engineered client library, the self-healing storage solution and the peer-to-peer information system, to name a few. Gradual introduction of these new services and client tools into the production middleware releases is carried out together with NDGF and thus ensures a smooth transition to the next generation Grid middleware. Standard interfaces and modularity of the new component design are essential for ARC contributions to the planned Universal Middleware Distribution of the European Grid Initiative.