Open Grid Services Interface (OGSI) Grid services

The Open Grid Services Interface defines rules about how OGSA can be implemented using Grid

services that are Web services extensions.

The OGSI specification defines a Grid service instance as “a Web service that conforms to a set of

conventions expressed by WSDL as service interfaces, extensions, and behaviors.”

The OGSI specification defines Grid services features that include:

Statefulness

Stateful interactions

The ability to create new instances

Service lifetime management

Notification of state changes and Grid service groups

The OGSI model requires Grid services to be specified via Grid Web Services Definition Language

(GWSDL), which is an extension of WSDL.

The OGSI 1.0 specification defines the following interfaces that should be implemented by a Grid

service.

The portType construct of the WSDL grammar defines the functional interface implemented by a

Web service. An OGSI-compliant Grid service component extends the GridService portType. The

component may optionally extend other portTypes as listed in the previous table along with any

application-specific portTypes, as required. The OGSI model also extends WSDL with mechanisms

to specify additional state data descriptions.

The Globus Toolkit 3 (GT3) contains a reference implementation for the OGSI.

However, its implementation through extensions to some of the Web services standards and the

continuing evolution of Web services has made it more difficult for the Web services and Grid

services to continue to merge than originally hoped. The Web Services-Resource Framework (WR-
RF) provides a promising solution that can address the needs of Grid services while still holding

true to the Web services foundation.

The main issue of contention was the perceived divergence of the OGSI specification from the

popular practices in the Web services community at large.

The main objective behind the WSRF refactoring is to bring the Grid services and Web services

communities closer together.