User-Friendly Frameworks for Accessing Computational Resources

The grid technology, even though it gives great computational power and greatly improves the manner of exploitation of resources, also has its disadvantages. Grid systems, due to their distribution and heterogeneity, are very complex and hard to access and oversee. Thus, one of the research fields designs tools and technologies that give easy, secure and consistent access to grid applications and resources as well as seamless interoperation between various computing environments. The lack of user-friendly tools is especially annoying in cases when users need to access computing resources of different grid infrastructures. Similar problems are experienced by grid application developers who should focus on applications themselves and not on their interoperation with different grid middleware. In this article we describe the concept of an abstract grid model and its implementation in two user-friendly frameworks – Migrating Desktop and g-Eclipse. They both are intuitive graphical environments that provide: easy access to heterogeneous resources and seamless interoperation of underlying middleware solutions. Although the two products provide similar functionalities they are complementary to each other and target different user groups. The method of integration of scientific applications with both frameworks was also presented.