Subject: Reviews From: Chris Johnson Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2001 15:48:26 -0600 (MDT) To: Geoffrey Fox X-UIDL: 0d7ce4b172160000 X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 Received: by mailer.csit.fsu.edu (mbox gcfpc) (with Cubic Circle's cucipop (v1.31 1998/05/13) Sun Oct 14 18:09:08 2001) X-From_: fox@mailer.csit.fsu.edu Sun Oct 14 18:07:19 2001 Return-Path: Delivered-To: gcfpc@csit.fsu.edu Received: from dirac.csit.fsu.edu (dirac.csit.fsu.edu [144.174.128.44]) by mailer.csit.fsu.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8616F23A07 for ; Sun, 14 Oct 2001 18:07:19 -0400 (EDT) Received: from localhost by dirac.csit.fsu.edu (AIX4.2/UCB 8.7) id SAA86462; Sun, 14 Oct 2001 18:07:18 -0400 (EDT) Resent-Message-Id: <200110142207.SAA86462@dirac.csit.fsu.edu> Delivered-To: fox@csit.fsu.edu Received: from fins.uits.indiana.edu (fins.uits.indiana.edu [129.79.6.185]) by mailer.csit.fsu.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9204323AB0 for ; Mon, 8 Oct 2001 17:48:29 -0400 (EDT) Received: from wrath.cs.utah.edu (wrath.cs.utah.edu [155.99.198.100]) by fins.uits.indiana.edu (8.10.1/8.10.1/IUPO) with ESMTP id f98LmSQ08024 for ; Mon, 8 Oct 2001 16:48:28 -0500 (EST) Received: from sci2.cs.utah.edu (sci2.cs.utah.edu [155.99.203.8]) by wrath.cs.utah.edu (8.11.6/8.11.1) with ESMTP id f98LmRH25460; Mon, 8 Oct 2001 15:48:27 -0600 (MDT) Received: (from crj@localhost) by sci2.cs.utah.edu (8.8.8/8.8.8) id PAA93112; Mon, 8 Oct 2001 15:48:26 -0600 (MDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <15298.7978.233280.13448@sci2.cs.utah.edu> In-Reply-To: <200110051506.LAA72220@dirac.csit.fsu.edu> References: <200110051506.LAA72220@dirac.csit.fsu.edu> X-Mailer: VM 6.72 under 21.1 (patch 12) "Channel Islands" XEmacs Lucid Resent-To: Geoffrey Fox Resent-Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2001 18:07:18 -0400 Resent-From: Geoffrey Fox Hi, Here are some short reviews for the GCE Special Issue papers I was assigned. Let me know if you need anything further. In general, I didn't think any of these papers were spectacular, but most at least contained useful information. Except for paper number 544, the others weren't really full papers in the sense of a journal article. I would rank the papers (best to worst) as: 544, 532, 533 More specifics below. Cheers, Chris ______________________________ Paper # 532 NetBuild Moore and Dongarra This paper discusses Netbuild, which is a tool that can automate the processing of installing and configuring software libraries. Netbuild works on heterogeneous platforms. The paper describes the basic architecture of Netbuild and the initial implementation. As a software tool, Netbuild would be a welcome and useful addition to the application programmers toolbox. Programmers spend an inordinate amount of time searching for and installing software libraries. Such searches and installations are often met with frustration as most such libraries do not install, nor are correctly configured in an easy manner. If Netbuild could overcome such frustration, it would be a truly useful software tool. Details in the paper are "light". The outline that is presented of Netbuild seems reasonable. One thing I couldn't quite figure out if there were any language dependent issues? Will Netbuild work for C++ software libraries that extensively use templates? What about mixed language software libraries, will Netbuild install and configure different languages equally as well? Because the paper discusses an "initial implementation", it is difficult to assess Netbuild's effectiveness. It would be great if the authors could update the project to include any initial results. _______________________________ Paper # 533 The ASCI Computational Grid Rheinheimer et al. This paper discusses the DOE's ASCI project computational grid. The paper gives a brief (only 5 pages) description of initial deployment of the ASCI Computational Grid. One immediate question I had was: is this "the" ASCI Grid, i.e. is this what all ASCI labs and level one Centers are using? The discussion seemed to discuss more of a possible grid deployment, rather than the "one and only" ASCI Computational Grid? There are few details in the paper and thus it is difficult to asses the success of the initial deployment. The authors note that November of 2001 will be a critical time when the ASCI grid will made available to users. It would be great if the authors could update the current short description with some initial results from users. ________________________________ Paper # 544 A CORBA Commodity Grid Kit Laszewski et al. This paper discusses a research project to design and deploy a CORBA-based commodity software system that works on the grid. The idea is to allow application developers that have written their applications within a CORBA framework to be able to utilize the CoG Kit and enable their applications on the grid. While I am not a big fan of CORBA per se, it is my opinion that this is exactly the type of toolkits that are necessary to make the grid useful for "real" application developers. Currently, there is a LARGE gap people middleware developers, that develop tools such as Globus and Legion, and "real" application developers that have large, complex applications. Tools, such as the CoG Kit, are very much in need if Grid computing is to be successful to the application community. The paper is well written and has some tables that CORBA applications programmers will find useful. .