Referee 1 *******************************************

E: Referee Comments (For Author and Editor)
------------------------------

Good overall description of the Unicore framework. It might be helpful
to provide an example case study of how an application scientist uses
the various Unicore services either as initial motivation or to tie
together the practical benefits of Unicore services at the end of the
overview.
Good explanation of difficulties in using applets in the implementation
section. Also, I'm still shaky on security in Unicore. If it doesn't
implement GSI, how can a process act on behalf of a user? In Globus,
this is done via a proxy which contains a short-lived private key-- I
see from the UUDB description you have a mapping between certs and user
names, so is the UUDB and the NJS and TSI  considered "trusted" software
much like the Globus gatekeeper? And are all the connections between
these components secure? You might want to say something more about the
trust model that Unicore follows.
In Future plans, do you see web services palying any role in the future
of Unicore? I would be interested to know more about GRIP as well.

Referee 2 *******************************************

E: Referee Comments (For Author and Editor)  ------------------------------

This overview paper summarizes nicely some of the development and features of the 
UNICORE environment. This paper is very appropriate for the issue and the 
paper does only need a couple of minor presentation changes in the reference section. 
I very much appreciated the results explained in the implementation Section about Java.
 
F: Presentation Changes

Reference 5, include contact address for order possibilities add (in German)

Reference 6, include institution, address and type of presentation.
	Avoid the use of et.al. and use full list of authors.
	Add (in German)

If possible provide http link to reference 5 and 6


Use . At end of references.

Referee 3 *******************************************

E: Referee Comments (For Author and Editor)  ------------------------------

The paper presents high level overview of Unicore system. The project seem to be addressing
all aspects of Grid computing -- from middleware and software tools/user interface. The paper
can be valuable if it can show some Experimental Results or a Application
Case Study that is using Unicode in solving a real world problem. Many places
project refer to future work. I believe it is important to acknowledge current
state of the art in each of the area. For example, you mentioned about
resource broker, it might be worth citing papers such as:
 Nimrod-G: http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~davida/papers/hpcasia.ps.Z
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~davida/papers/ecogrid.pdf
that already solve many resource brokering issues. The paper also mentions about
executing repetitive tasks, but it does not say how they are created. Projects
like Nimrod-G already provide a simple scripting language for developing
coarse grained task-farming or data parallel apps. A great way to support
legacy applications. I think UNICORE can consider similar ideas.

There is no indication how inter operability between various components will
be achieved.

F: Presentation Changes

One page 5/14: In "Support for legacy jobs" section, CHANGE "if existing
techniques work" --> "if existing techniques DO NOT work"

The paper is good, but looks like all discussion is in Future tense. We 
will do this, we will do that etc. But in one place paper says that latest
prototype is released on July 2001. It is important that you
update the paper fully to reflect current implementation.

Other comments please see section E for review report. I think it will good
change "Current and Future Work etc." section to Focus more on technical derails.
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